{"id":221,"date":"2009-07-23T13:23:24","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T20:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/?p=221"},"modified":"2009-07-23T13:23:24","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T20:23:24","slug":"good-stuff-in-chicago-the-business-case-for-sop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/2009\/07\/23\/good-stuff-in-chicago-the-business-case-for-sop\/","title":{"rendered":"GOOD STUFF in Chicago, The Business Case for S&OP"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom

Tom Wallace<\/p><\/div>\n

No I\u2019m not talking about the Chicago Cubs or deep dish pizza.<\/p>\n

Rather, I\u2019m talking about our third Best of the Best S&OP Conference, co-sponsored by APICS and IBF<\/a> last month. It was quite a success with a very nice turnout, particularly when one considers the state of the economy. And the speakers \u2013 if you\u2019ll pardon my language \u2013 did a damn fine job.<\/p>\n

One of the pearls that I managed to pick up during the proceedings came from Adam Szczepanski, VP of Strategic Planning with Forum Oil Technologies in Houston and a former CFO in another oil patch company, talked about projecting cash flow 18 or more months into the future, as an integral part of their Executive S&OP process.<\/p>\n

Why do this? Why bother? Well, it turns out there are some very good reasons, one being the stockholders. Adam gave the example of a company that made dividend payments on its stock once every six months. Well, four months ahead of time, the Executive S&OP cash flow projection showed that they\u2019d be unable to meet that dividend payment. This was due to a large inventory build-up planned to cover a temporary plant shutdown for major maintenance and upgrades. The cash flow projection in Executive S&OP went negative.<\/p>\n

This led them to modify their plans for the plant shutdown. They were able to meet the dividend payment by changing the plans for the plant shutdown and still accomplish what needed to be done. It was S&OP that gave them the \u201cheads-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another first-rate speaker was Bob Hirschey, VP of Strategy for Weyerhauser\u2019s Cellulose Fiber business. One of Bob\u2019s statements just knocked my socks off: \u201cS&OP has made our strategic planning process come alive.\u201d He went on to say that they don\u2019t rework their strategic plans each month, but rather they check during their monthly S&OP cycle to insure that the sales and operations plans and the strategic plans are in sync, and when they are not, take corrective action.<\/p>\n

Last and certainly not least was Ross Bushman, who actually went first as he gave the opening Keynote talk. Ross, the COO at Cast-Fab Technologies, talked about how his company\u2019 wind power business virtually evaporated in the last half of 2008; this was caused by the credit markets drying up and thus virtually no financing available to wind farm developers. Ross\u2019s message was that Executive S&OP enabled them to cope far better than they could have without it.<\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell about how Sales & Operations Planning is helping you to manage during these turbulent times a la Cast-Fab? Or how you\u2019re using it for advanced financial planning as they do at Forum Oil Technologies? Or how it\u2019s helped to make your strategic planning processes more effective, as it has at Weyerhauser? If so, I\u2019d love to hear from you.\u00a0 We welcome your comments.<\/p>\n

Cheers,
\nTom Wallace
\ntom @ tfwallace.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No I\u2019m not talking about the Chicago Cubs or deep dish pizza. Rather, I\u2019m talking about our third Best of the Best S&OP Conference, co-sponsored by APICS and IBF last month. It was quite a success with a very nice turnout, particularly when one considers the state of the economy. And the speakers \u2013 if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[82,34,68,35,37,38],"class_list":{"0":"post-221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-forecasting-and-planning","7":"tag-apics","8":"tag-demand-planning","9":"tag-executive-sop","10":"tag-forecasting","11":"tag-sop","12":"tag-supply-chain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}