We recently surveyed our customers to ask how they prefer to stay on top of S&OP advances and emerging best practices.  While it’s no surprise that searching the web and reading reports remain popular activities, an overwhelming majority rate industry conferences and dialogue with fellow practitioners and vendors as a “very useful” source of information.  Great content is essential but conversation remains king, particularly in a field that’s evolving as quickly as S&OP.

To that end, we’re excited that Emerson Therm O-Disc, a long-time beneficiary of the Steelwedge S&OP solution will be speaking on the topic of planning best practices.  The presentation is part of The Supply Chain Forecasting & Planning Conference (Europe), organized by the Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning and taking place on November 17 -18 in Amsterdam. The event brings together executives from leading high-tech, manufacturing and consumer products firms to discuss the fact that S&OP has risen in importance and is now a proven way to meet demand while optimizing supply chain costs.

Of course, we all know that great conversation requires that we leap outside of our comfort zone.  So, as seasoned S&OP conference goers, we’d like to share a few pointers on how to not miss out on the expertise that might be standing behind you in line at the buffet:

* Start your morning at the coffee urn. Meet people. Coffee is a sacred rite for most conference-goers – particularly when the festivities start at 7:30 AM. Be especially nice to our friends from other time zones. They’ll be the ones drinking directly from the spigot.

* Spare yourself a visit to the optometrist. Sit upfront. The fact remains that 12 point font still finds its way onto too many PowerPoint slides. We salute the truly studious who make it…

The relationship between sales forecasting, demand planning, and lean principles has been analyzed, evaluated, and debated for decades.  However, in light of recent market volatility, this debate is final reaching resolution – executives overseeing even the most lean, JIT-focused supply chains, need to planning.

Chris Chiappinelli, a blogger associated with the Managing Automation Blog offers the following :

“Just in Time, in its purest form, is a thing of beauty. Read Toyota’s description of it on their website — it sounds like poetry in motion. But the marketplace doesn’t care for poetry. We don’t want to place our order and watch the gears — perfectly meshed though they may be — smoothly churn out our product. We want our hamburgers pre-cooked and waiting for us under a heat lamp. In that world, Just-in-Time has no place. It’s a museum piece, a relic of a more patient era. In this world of pre-heated hamburgers and mass customization, Toyota and its counterparts are forced to produce not to actual demand, but to expected demand. And that, my friends, not only belies JIT; it creates a huge amount of risk.”

“A New York Times article illustrates just how far from its roots Toyota strayed:Previously, plants operated under the sales force’s direction of “you make them, we will sell them,” said Real C. Tanguay, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. Now the philosophy is, “if we can sell them, then you will make them,” he said.”  “Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Who would have predicted that a Toyota executive would ever sum up the company’s philosophy as, “You make them, we will sell them”?”

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Steelwedge enables customers to better understand and anticipate demand through forecasting, collaborative engagement of field sales, and analysis of changes in sales pipeline opportunities.  In today’s…

With each passing month, more consumer products and high tech companies are reaching  out to Steelwedge to meet the the unfulfilled promises offered by Demantra.  Why is this the case?  The answer is multifaceted but at the core it is about value!  While Demantra implementations can take up to  a year and reach significant customer programming to manage configurations – Steelwedge OnDemand can be configured in as little as four weeks.

Steelwedge’s unique forecasting solution provides the kind of flexiblity required at today’s fast changing companies.  Demantra’ fragile structure and on premise deployment cannot easily adapted to sudden changes. Traveller’s continue to appreciate the robust offline capaties offered by Steelwedge while advanced planners thrive in our small communicty.

I just returned from a ten day whirlwind tour of Europe during which time I met with sales prospects and partners in England, Sweden, Germany and France. One message resonated loud and clear – European companies still tend to operate on a country-specific basis. Systems are disparate, processes are inconsistent, and collaboration on forecasts and plans is limited. However, competitive and regulatory pressures are forcing companies to integrate processes, consolidate planning and improve forecasting.

Today this process is largely done in spreadsheets. However, all parties agree that sales and operations (S&OP) roll-ups, plan consolidation, and forecast collaboration require immense amounts of manual work. Dozens of different perspectives and users exist not to mention disparate ways of being organized across countries. When shown the Steelwedge way – co-option of existing spreadsheets through the adoption of Steelwedge Enterprise Enabled Excel spreadsheets, European managers become extremely excited. For the first time they see a solution that meets security requirements, that can eliminate months of latency in demand signals, can allow improved inventory practices, and better bottom-line forecasting. Not only that, but a solution that is extremely configurable, flexible, and cost-effective.

The Europeans are investing – how long will it take for our European user-base to surpass our US user-base?