UTK Supply Chain Strategy & Management Forum
Nov 4-6, 2008
Contact:
Dr. John P. (Paul) Dittmann
Director of Corporate Partnerships
Demand & Supply Integration Forums
The University of Tennessee
College of Business
310 Stokely Management Ctr.
Knoxville, TN 37996-0530
jdittman@utk.edu

Webcast July 8 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Five Easy Fixes: How you can quickly improve your S&OP Performance
Dr. David L. Anderson, Managing Director of Supply Chain Ventures
Tuesday, July 8, 10AM Pacific, 12Noon Central, 1PM Eastern

Webcast May 20 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Steelwedge Solutions Summit - Roadmap to Mastering S&OP and Preview of One-Click Planning
Steelwedge Vice President Business Development Chris Givens
Tuesday, May 20
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast April 29 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Emerging Trends in S&OP
Deloitte Consulting Strategy & Operations Director Bob Boehm, Senior Manager John La Bouff and Steelwedge VP Solutions E.J. Tavella
Tuesday, April 29
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast March 25 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Managing Demand and Supply Uncertainty in S&OP
Professor Blake Johnson, Consulting Assistant Professor Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University Consulting
Tuesday, March 25
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Webcast Feb 26 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: Demand and Supply Integration--The Strategic Imperative of S&OP"
Dr. Theodore P. Stank,
Head, Department of Marketing & Transportation UTK
Tuesday, Feb 26
1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast Jan 22 - Best Practices Leadership Forum: S&OP--How to Make it Work
Tom Wallace, Author and Educator
Tuesday January 22, 2008
View Recorded Webcast

Steelwedge Momentum

2008-05-13 - Steelwedge Named
"A Company To Keep An Eye On in 2008"

2008-05-06 - Leading Analyst Firm's Report Calls Steelwedge Software the "Dominant Player" in the Pure Play Sales and Operations Planning Category

New Steelwedge Blog

Your opportunity to Participate in an ongoing dialog regarding S&OP and Collaborative Forecasting.
Click to join

Emerging Trends in Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)

(Editor’s Note: This is a recap of the Steelwedge Best Practices Leadership Forum Web Seminar, April 29, 2008, featuring presentations by Deloitte Consulting Strategy & Operations Director Bob Boehm with Senior Manager John La Bouff, and Steelwedge Vice President Solutions E. J. Tavella.)

At Deloitte Consulting we believe that world class Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) begins with enterprise forecasting and synchronized excellence. This requires executive leadership, current and accurate account information, a team focus with business rules for decision-making, and a recognition that there are two levels of S&OP—Executive (Strategic) and Traditional (Operational Planning.) The process is about continuous improvement as there is always the opportunity for better synchronization.

Here are the frequently heard pain points with perspective and direction:

PAIN POINTS		PERSPECTIVES
Sales, Marketing, Finance and Supply Chain seem to be operating to four different numbers. We spend a lot of time reconciling different views of what ‘demand’ will be.		Rather than driving to “one number”, which often leads to non-value added reconciliation, leading companies are instead operating to an “aligned set of numbers”.
We’ll invest in a promotion to stimulate demand but then have trouble supplying the product to satisfy that lift in demand.		In industries such as consumer goods with substantial event-driven demand, companies are moving from a total forecast to a “base and lift” component design.
We never seem to be able to predict how new products will do.		The demand forecast for a new product needs to systematically incorporate insight on the amount of marketing funding and the breadth of distribution (regional vs national).
Shortfalls to our financial plans force us to ‘push’ product last minute to our trade partners at the end of the quarter.		To proactively identify revenue/profit gaps in time to develop consumer pull programs to close them, companies are systematically “dollarizing” their volume forecast across the entire planning horizon.
We seem to be flooded with customer data / POS information that we do not know how to effectively use.		Companies are developing Demand Sense and Respond capabilities to dramatically increase visibility to customer demand and the ability to use this information effectively.
Executive presence is limited. We spend more time talking about data problems than making decisions		Enterprise forecasting process for leading companies is combined with automated data collection and analysis which provides drill down and ‘what if’’ analysis capabilities

Successful companies are increasingly shifting focus from driving functional excellence to improving synchronization across internal functions and with external trading partners—suppliers and customers.

Enterprise forecasting and S&OP link strategic and operational planning including production, sales, finance and marketing across all time horizons.

A robust enterprise forecasting process ensures that marketing, sales supply chain and financial processes are synchronized to deliver an accurate view of customer demand while demand sense and respond capabilities provide visibility to near term demand requirements within the customer network.

There are six primary benefits from and three key issues and challenges to improved enterprise forecasting:

Key issues and challenges to Enterprise Forecasting improvements

• Executive leadership & governance
  • Is there a plan-of-record process (S&OP) that is truly “home base” for decision making
  • Do facts and business rules drive a repeatable decision process
    
    
• Data
  • Is it available and appropriate—often too high-level, too low-level, too fragmented, too poor quality
    
    
• Scope
  • Horizon, balance and coverage—are all demand, supply, inventory strategy, capacities, and financial issues addressed over the right time frames
  • Are risk & uncertainty comprehended, with contingency scenarios
  • Is product strategy and lifecycle management integrated with operational planning
    
    

Enterprise forecasting is difficult to achieve without business management and technology partners who can guide organizational change and process excellence, help define key metrics and implement advanced demand and supply planning tools.

About the Presenters:

Bob Boehm, Director, Deloitte Consulting
Bob Boehm leads the supply chain practice for the high tech industry for the NORPAC region for Deloitte Consulting. Bob has over 25 years experience in manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement. Bob assists clients with supply chain strategy and execution in areas of operations strategy, planning, order fulfillment, sourcing, and procurement. Projects include operations restructuring for a high-tech manufacturer, cost reduction of $150 million for a wireless carrier, major improvement in forecasting and sales & operations planning for a semiconductor equipment company.

John La Bouff, Senior Manager- Strategy & Operations, Deloitte Consulting
John La Bouff has over 30 years experience in both PLM and supply chain transformations.
He is an acknowledged thought leader in technology and electronics manufacturing, planning, and product data management. He is experienced in strategy implementation and change leadership.