Most folks involved in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) for supply chain management have heard the terms “optimization” or “linear programming” with regards to supply planning and have cringed at the sound. Over the past few years a new “cringe” worthy term has emerged – “machine learning” which is sometimes used with the term predictive
Research shows that a majority of mergers fail. A recent study put the percentage as high as 83%. As one would imagine, there are various reasons for this high rate of failure. However, the reasons can be divided into two main groups:
In my last post, I wrote a little on the importance of extending participation in the sales and operations (S&OP) collaboration process as well as knowing what questions to ask each party. In this blog, I would like to step away from collaborating with internal departments to discuss collaborating with customers.
In my experience with several different companies, it is evident that companies make great decisions some of the time. Unfortunately, being successful only some of the time doesn’t cut it. The key to business success is to make good decisions all of the time. Company success is much like investment success. It requires a disciplined
What-if scenario planning is an excellent technique that allows a planner to ask questions on the future. Given a working model that represents a business, a planner can quickly ask the questions that represent the range of possibilities in the foreseeable future which can render the current plan obsolete.
It was Sir Isaac Newton who told us that things not in motion will continue to be that way until acted upon by an external force. Vice versa, things that were already in motion will continue to move that particular way without a change in direction or speed unless acted upon by an external force.
Extending sales and operations collaboration requires a clear articulation of business rules and information transfers. As a result, knowing exactly what questions to ask is crucial. In this short blog series, I will provide a list of questions to ask the various roles and people involved in the S&OP process. These questions can make a