Monitoring the Information Flows

Sales Forecasting

A widespread pitfall: a company wants reliable forecasts. And to do so, invests by purchasing a dedicated sophisticated software. Sadly, this doesn’t work. Just because the « secret » for issuing reliable sales forecasts is not hidden in the algorithms, charts and spreadsheets of a software, but definitely can be the outcome of commitment and alignment, common objectives of Top Management, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Supply Chain and HR, all together involved in a process to collect, share and validate the forecasts.
We help you to define your Sales Forecasting Process, the associated organization, the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders, the converging objectives, the KPI’s and the incentives linked to them, how to issue the forecasts themselves (and, at this time, the question of implementing a dedicated software will be answered), how to broadcast the forecast along the value chain, how to measure their accuracy.

Supply Planning

… Or how to offer the best planning processes to ensure satisfaction for Customers (service level), Sales (more inventory available), Marketing (new products and promotions first, a large offer, everyday, a dedicated product for every single consumer), Finance (less inventory, get rid of old stock a.s.a.p), Manufacturing (restricted product offer, mass production, no plan change for a better OEE) : Supply means Trade-Off !

We help you to define your Demand (Sales Forecasts Vs. Customer Orders: How to aggregate), your inventory target policy, your supply planning process, its setup and evolution, how to leverage the needed skills, the planning softwares, calculation and control of the supply planning, the purchasing process.

And we pay attention to master the power of APS: so developed, that it can be tantalizing to push up sophistication, by combining their multiple parameters, showing infinite possibilities. This is where the danger is, should the meaning of the outputs become out of reach for the users: « Well, Hmm, I placed this order because this system said so » - is this really what you’d like to hear from your team mates? Our goal here: help you to keep control, with comprehensive proposals, by simplifying the set-up, for your users to keep ownership over technology, and have them to be able to maintain the parameters accurately.

Production Planning

Common energy dedicated by all stakeholders on Distribution side, leading to upgrade forecasts reliability and sustain efficient supply planning, would be useless, should this stream stop at the factory’s gate.

How to fulfill demand and optimize production load, avoid bullwhip effects, ensure a smooth production output consistent with Overall Equipment Efficiency goals, use at the best your machinery and people resources - This is the goal we will target with you, by organizing your planning. Taking into account your production capacity constraints: where your bottlenecks lay, how to minimize their effects, search for alternatives or anticipation, with the best possible resources allowance.

Sales & Operations Planning

… a.k.a. SIOP, or more recently, IBP: under different names, and as numerous as un-precise definitions, the Sales & Operation Planning is too often seen as a process aiming to aggregate Supply Chain information. Indeed, the initial setup of S&OP has often to go first through a significant, and time-consuming, data crushing & reliability & consolidation, upgrade. And then people feel that the objective is met when reporting becomes eventually reliable, after such tremendous efforts. But this is only, even highly needed, a first step to ensure critical conditions are ready to sustain the S&OP itself.
Step by step, we support you to build and run a S& OP process consistent with the maturity of your Supply Chain, as a help for decision-making and a progress enabler for your organization : a « true » S&OP is an iterative process : bottom-up to aggregate reliable data and select key information to address critical decisions to be taken, submit an overview and the « hot topics » to the top management ; then top-down : translate into operational changes the decisions given by the Top Management.