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

University of Tennessee --
8th Annual World Class Sales Forecasting Management Conference
May 13-15, 2008
For more info: http://bus.utk.edu/ivc/forecasting/

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

Best Practices Leadership Forum--
S&OP Series with APICS...

Dec 11-- Part 3: Best Practices:
Lessons learned from the field
Dave Garwood,
President, R.D. Garwood, Inc.

Dr. Richard L. Dawe,
Golden Gate University

Michael D. Ford,
Principal, TQM Works Consulting
View Recorded Webcast

Nov 27-- Part 2: S&OP Implementation: A Case Study
Len Couture,
Managing Director, Bluewolf Group
View Recorded Webcast

Oct 30-- Part 1:S&OP Closing the Chasm Between Theory and Practice
Dave Garwood,
President, R.D. Garwood, Inc.
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast July 31 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Implementing a Collaborative Planning Forecasting and
Replenishment Program
Ron Ireland,
Principal, Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast May 8 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Sales and Operations Planning for Integrated Business Management
George Palmatier,
Principal, Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast April 3 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- How to Extend SAP for effective Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Mr. Padman Ramankutty,
CEO, Intrigosys, LLC., former CEO and Founder, Bristlecone, Inc.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
View Recorded Webcast

Steelwedge Momentum:
New Clients and Partners

1/29/2008 -- Mobile Computing Solutions Provider Psion Teklogix Selects Steelwedge Software for Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) Initiative

01/16/2008 -- Steelwedge Software Announces SAP Powered by NetWeaver Certification for its Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) Solution

New Steelwedge Blog

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

Sales & Operations Planning: How To Make It Work

(Editors Note: This is a recap of the Steelwedge Best Practices Leadership Forum, January 22, featuring presentations by Author and Educator Tom Wallace and Steelwedge Software VP Business Development Chris Givens.)

Tom Wallace: Let’s begin with a quadrant analysis of the four fundamentals of Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)--Demand, Supply, Volume and Mix. Demand and Supply on the horizontal axis will be influenced by Volume and Mix on the Vertical axis.

Think of Volume in terms of strategy/policy/ risk, the big picture, how much, rates, product families, monthly time frames out to 36 months. Then think of Mix in terms of tactics/execution, the details, which products, timing/sequence, weekly/daily time frames out 1-3 months.

Then consider the fundamentals in the context of the S&OP process—Demand Planning, Supply/Capacity Planning and Operations Planning (Master Scheduling, Supplier and Plant Scheduling and Distribution Scheduling and you have created what we call Executive S&OP.

It looks like S&OP is becoming the successor to ERP/MRPII which is why we developed the term Executive S&OP to set it apart. Executive S&OP fits between Strategic/Business Planning and Operations Planning.

We call it Executive S&OP because the leader of the business unit—GM, President, COO—must be hands on for to insure stewardship and leadership. But, properly set up and administered, the time commitment of the leader will only be 1.5 hours per month. If the leader is not involved attendance, quality, intensity, results, life expectancy and sustainability will suffer.

Since S&OP is simple to understand, the real issue is implementation because it’s about behavior change—changing the way we do our jobs. As someone once said, “The hard stuff is the soft stuff.” Implementing Executive S&OP is different—it’s highly focused on top management, relatively few people and it’s low cost/high impact.

Implementation involves software, data and, most of all, people. The leader must provide support, funding, commitment and leadership. And, there must be active, hands-on participation by the leader and the staff every month.

There are three fundamental principles: (1) Implementation begins and ends with the leader; (2) “Hold the high ground” by getting top management involved at the outset will almost always result in success; but (3) “Build it and they will come,” or designing the process first, getting the mechanics working and then attempting to sell it to top management has a low probability of success.

There are three phases to implementation: Preparation, Expansion and Integration…

…and a nine month timeline from the initial executive briefing to full financial integration and institutionalizing the process.

Implementation roles include: Executive Champion, Design Team (Core Team and Project Team), Design Team Leader and S&OP Expert—someone who has done an S&OP implementation before.
This may be a consultant.

Success requires that the Design Team define the set of practices—what, how, who—and get accurate, timely data that everyone believes in.
The leadership role is to instill discipline and accountability, constant improvement, changed performance measures and behavior change.

The future of S&OP can be seen in current growth factors: (1) Success breeds success; (2) Lean manufacturing demands S&OP; (3) Globalization; (4) New users outside traditional manufacturing; (4) S&OP specific software—like Steelwedge; (5) Greater financial integration and simulation; and (6) A growing presence in the executive suite.

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Chris Givens: There are five cornerstones to making S&OP work with Steelwedge Software. They are: (1) Engaging Sales and Finance; (2) Enabling collaborative forecasting across functions; (3) Balancing Supply and Demand; (4) Measuring and Monitoring Performance; and (5) Automating the process.

We’ll take a closer look at each cornerstone identifying typical challenges and how to overcome them to make it work.

About the Presenters:

Tom Wallace is a writer and educator specializing in Sales & Operations Planning. He is a distinguished fellow of the Ohio State University Center
for Operational Excellence, and currently writes and speaks in conjunction with the Institute of Business Forecasting. Tom has taught extensively in North America and abroad: Australia, Belgium, China, France, Great Britain, and New Zealand, and has written twelve books, including Sales & Operations Planning: the Executive’s Guide and Sales & Operations Planning: the How-To Handbook, the third edition, published in early 2008.

Chris Givens, VP Business Development, Steelwedge Software,
has 20 years’ experience in supply chain software and management consulting. He was founder and CEO of Avere, a venture-backed, real-time supply chain software company, which he subsequently sold to a publicly traded supply chain execution vendor. Prior to Avere, Chris was Vice President of Product Management and Industry Solutions at Adexa, responsible for driving product strategy and growing Adexa into a leading supply chain solution provider. At Accenture Chris was instrumental in growing the supply chain strategy practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he managed strategy and software implementation projects for fortune 500 clients in the High-Tech and CPG industries, becoming a supply chain thought leader. Chris holds a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, and a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Sacramento State University.