{"id":986,"date":"2010-10-26T12:26:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T16:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/?p=986"},"modified":"2010-10-26T12:26:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T16:26:44","slug":"seeing-past-the-nouns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/2010\/10\/26\/seeing-past-the-nouns\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Past the Nouns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Maria Simos CEO e-forecasting.com<\/p><\/div>\n

What do battery operated lawnmowers, $1B of crop protection annual R&D and making chemical drum orders on your iPhone have in common?<\/p>\n

More than you would think.<\/p>\n

All of these things have been used as examples of how the world’s leading companies are working to improve their supply chain planning and forecasting process at this year’s IBF Supply Chain Planning and Forecasting Best Practices Conference<\/a> in Orlando Florida.\u00a0 All you have to do is see past the nouns and look to the processes, which are much more the same than you’d think.<\/p>\n

During all of the sessions at the best practices conference, speakers and attendees have shared important takeaways from their company’s attempts to improve their bottom line by bringing\u00a0 more efficiency and collaboration into their sales and operations planning (S&OP) and forecasting functions.<\/p>\n

During the S&OP Workshop led by Andy Coldrick of Ling-Coldrick.com, Rick Ling of Demand Technologies and Mike Wilson of Syngenta, the conversation started with this simple statement:<\/p>\n

Everybody agrees on a number for one hour a month.<\/p>\n

That shouldn’t be the case.\u00a0 There is a need to understand different views.\u00a0 Why are different functions coming up with different numbers? What are the assumptions they are using? It is important to understand the assumptions because they are the real story behind the number.<\/p>\n

For S&OP to be successful, it needs to be collaborative.\u00a0 The Breakthrough Ling Coldrick Model provides steps when followed ‘ from right to left’ makes this possible The steps first start with (rather than end with) the senior business management review. If you start from the top, you get commitment from the senior management team and the rest of the pieces fall into place such as managing the portfolio and new activities, managing demand and supply and using integrated reconciliation. It is important to link dollars and value.\u00a0 Until these two are integrated, you will have two different meetings, the demand planning meeting<\/a> and the business meeting.<\/p>\n

Mike shared how Syngenta used these principals to move from a command and control environment to a growth mentality.\u00a0 The main steps they followed were shared in a helpful assessment guide that was provided for us as a takeaway from the session.\u00a0 The process is broken down into the main steps following the ‘right to left’ approach.\u00a0 As mentioned above, the first of these steps is the senior business management review.\u00a0 During this step, you look at what has changed about your views of the future since last month and what actions you need to make.<\/p>\n

In another session, Dow Corning’s Michael Levey shared in his presentation titled \u201cBusiness Model Innovation Spurs Supply Chain Improvement.\u201d The session delved into how the company was able to split the business into two brands and in doing so was able to limit inventory, optimize operations, minimize overhead, consolidate transportation, work in emerging markets and quickly adapt to changing business strategies.\u00a0 They broke out their products based on innovation or efficiency.\u00a0 The innovation brand has remained Dow Corning which focuses on markets and specialty products and services.\u00a0 The efficiency brand called Xiameter is entirely online based. This is where customers input their own orders on the web which has an SAP backbone with no human intervention.\u00a0 Orders can be done in as little as 43 seconds from login to confirmation or as one customer shared with them, via iPhone while on a shopping trip with her daughter.<\/p>\n

Yet another session titled \u201cHow Home Depot Synchronized their Supply Chain with Consumer Demand\u201d Nadim Zoberi from Toro shared how they moved to a lean model with daily replenishment.\u00a0 This process has the benefits of less stock outs, is much simpler, has reduced inventory on Toro’s books by 250K units and even brought them the honor of winning an award from Home Dept as Partner of the Year.\u00a0 For Toro’s business, they also have achieved a 50% reduction in warranty claims and large capacity improvements of up to 50%. This was an important shift to work to build to retail demand rather than the sales forecast. They optimized the use of their seasonal distribution centers and now have ‘supermarkets’ with specific inventory levels set.\u00a0 Using electronic pull, replenishment is based on a daily cutoff sheet.\u00a0\u00a0 And Toro has not stopped there.\u00a0 Nadim said that as they get leaner, their strategy continues to change and they continue to make bigger goals to increase efficiencies.<\/p>\n

As you can see, the lessons from one industry and company can easily be translated into lessons that are universal in helping plan better in your own organization.\u00a0 We have a lot more in common than you would think. One person’s experience with lean manufacturing for lawnmowers can help with another\u2019s shoe manufacturing processes.\u00a0 You just have to see past the nouns and look to the processes, which as I have witnessed during several IBF Conferences<\/a> including this one, is happening, in sessions, in hallways, over dinner and I imagine in the Disney Parks too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do battery operated lawnmowers, $1B of crop protection annual R&D and making chemical drum orders on your iPhone have in common? More than you would think. All of these things have been used as examples of how the world’s leading companies are working to improve their supply chain planning and forecasting process at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[60,62,65,34,67,174,69,36,48,37,73,38],"class_list":{"0":"post-986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-forecasting-and-planning","7":"tag-best-practices","8":"tag-collaborative-forecasting","9":"tag-demand-forecasting","10":"tag-demand-planning","11":"tag-demand-planning-and-forecasting-conference","12":"tag-demand-planning-meeting","13":"tag-forecast-accuracy","14":"tag-ibf","15":"tag-institute-of-business-forecasting-and-planning","16":"tag-sop","17":"tag-sales-operations-planning","18":"tag-supply-chain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986"}],"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\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}