Are you heading out on your Sales and Operations Planning journey or have you already embarked on it? This ressource will provide you with lot’s of great content which hopefully can inspire you, to take your Sales and Operations Planning approach to the next level.

1. Getting the journey started

The basics of S&OP
Everyone has probably heard about S&OP, but do you really know what it is? In this blog post we provide you with the basics on S&OP. Read more here.

What value do you get from S&OP?
Like any other business initiative S&OP should be challenged on value impact. In this blogpost we would like to provide you with some insights. Read more here.

Digitalizing the S&OP process untaps further potential
The digitalized version of the S&OP process is recognized to further increase forecast accuracy, as well as reduced inventory investment and stable/increased service level. Read more here.

The myths and realities of Sales and Operations Planning
Chekcout this webinar which is a dynamic discussion of what S&OP is and is not. Listen or watch it here.

2. The details

Bring strategy back into S&OP
It is time to bring strategy back into S&OP. But how? Learn more in this webinar.

Your Supply Chain design checklist can be downloaded from the bottom of this page. Before you head down to that section, perhaps make a recap of the benefit’s of using advanced Supply Chain technologies for Supply Chain design first.

  • Make more automated decisions
    While most global Supply Chain-reliant companies have already embraced the power of data and advanced analytics across their company, the vast majority have been working with out-of-the-box tools cobbled together with in-house applications or spreadsheet-based solutions. Advanced technology can help the Supply Chain use mathematical solvers and algorithms to find the best decision or decisions for a given business problem within a defined set of constraints.
  • Quicker deployment to users in the organization
    Advanced technology offers the possibility of creating a personalized experience. With apps, you will be able to create a tailored solution with the appropriate user experience for anyone in the organization to facilitate democratized, AI-powered decision-making.
  • Gain proactive insights
    Leading companies can apply advanced technologies to fundamentally rethink and transform their Supply Chain, enhance their real-time understanding of activity in complex supply networks, and leverage continuous scenario planning to optimize the balance of cost against risk and agility of their network footprint.
  • Continually revisit the Supply Chain design
    In other words, by adopting new technologies and the practice of continuous design, companies can reduce risk, improve resilience, and turn their Supply Chain challenges into a competitive advantage. By applying advanced algorithms, companies can continually revisit and adapt to make the best decisions balancing profitability, service, risk, and sustainability.
  • Make faster decisions
    With an end-to-end extensible data model, AI, and rich algorithms, Supply Chain leaders can use simulations to quickly learn how to best respond to changing conditions. They can adjust scenarios and options in these models to identify which decisions best support agility and resilience. The best decisions require the right balance of profitability, service, risk, and sustainability.
  • Drive insights through relevant data
    Designing a Supply Chain that is both resilient and efficient while addressing increasingly complex and nuanced markets is challenging. Supply Chain will have to consider multiple dimensions: Proximity to custoer markets, diverse customer service requirements (including after sales service and reverse logistics), sources of rawmaterials, proximity to key suppliers and ecosystem partners, risks, regulations, customs, duties and sustainability factors.

Your Supply Chain design checklist can guide you to get off to a good start with your own approach to Supply Chain design?
The starting point for your Supply Chain design journey will always be your own Supply Chain challenges. Use the
following frameworks to become sharper on why it could be useful for you and your company to utilize advanced technologies within Supply Chain design. What kind of questions would be good to ask to become more specific on the use cases?

Checkout this chekclist which you can download right here:

Download the checklist now

If you want to build a sustainable business capable of delivering the right goods and services at the right cost, you need to build the right network as the foundation. We suggest you use advanced technologies within Supply Chain design. In this brochure we have gathered some of our resources which can provide you with a deeper understanding of the Supply Chain design field. Also we have gathered some of the benefits of using advanced technologies within Supply Chain design.

1. Getting the journey started, understanding Supply Chain design

Why should you make optimizing the Supply Chain network a strategic priority?
Find all the arguments in this blog post. 

What are the benefits of utilizing advanced technologies within Supply Chain design?
From our experience, when Supply Chains are designed to adapt and evolve, companies are prepared to make tradeoffs, optimize policies, develop scenarios, and accelerate the time between making and executing decisions. We typically see a reduction in time to develop and deploy optimized solutions by up to 80%. Leaders are empowered to make the best decisions based on valuable Supply Chain intelligence. At the end of the day, it benefits the bottom line and gives the flexibility to manage constant change and risk. Learn more in this blogpost.

Transform with a resilient Supply Chain design (whitepaper)
Would you like to understand more about Supply Chain design – then we urge you to download our whitepaper on Supply Chain design right here. 

Check out all the other arguments in this blog post.

2. Understanding the details

What is a Supply Chain digital twin?
Checkout this blogpost on why a digital twin can help you create a competitive advantage.

What are the ingredients to a successful Supply Chain design environment?
In Optilon we have worked with Supply Chain design for more than 15 years. Learn more about what we think are the ingredients to a succesful Supply Chain design environment right here.

Checklist for your approach
The starting point for your Supply Chain design journey will always be your own Supply Chain challenges. Use the following frameworks to become sharper on why it could be useful for you and your company to utilize advanced technologies within Supply Chain design. You can download them right here.

3. Finding the right partner

We are here to help you choose the right journey
Our engagement model shows you how we work together with our clients. We want to ensure that you get a humble, engaged and committed solution delivery that solves yoiur business challenges. Learn more about how we work right here. 

Would you like a product demonstration? Please feel free to reach out to us.

You can always find more resources in the Supply Chain design hub.

Continue reading

 Every Supply Chain leader seeks an optimally designed network to reduce costs while improving resiliency, efficiency, customer service levels, and competitive advantage. Furthermore, business and Supply Chain leaders understand that changes in demand, service expectations, market costs, and reverse logistics can affect the effectiveness of Supply Chain networks. Hence, it could be a business advantage to periodically re-evaluate the Supply Chain design or determine whether a restructure is needed. However, this can be pretty costly and time-consuming when done manually. That is why companies are looking to use Supply Chain design technology. Here a successful Supply Chain design environment plays a key role.

This blog post will look at what a successful Supply Chain design environment is all about. Before that. let’s recap what the business benefit’s of implementing Supply Chain design technology is: 

Business benefits of Supply Chain design technology
There is clear evidence that companies that implement digital technologies fueled with new data sources to test, learn, and adapt rapidly, can outpace their competitors. It is not just about dealing with the challenges and issues of the day; it is about using a culture of technology and digital tools that enable you to be ready for the challenges that are yet to come.

With Supply Chain design technology, you can:

  • Make more automated decisions
  • Quicker deployment to users in the organization
  • Gain proactive insights
  • Continually revisit the Supply Chain design
  • Make faster decisions
  • Drive insights through relevant data

If you choose to implement a Supply Chain design technology, you will typically be able to realize the following business benefits:

Successful ingredients to a thriving Supply Chain design environment

In Optilon, we worked with Supply Chain design for more than 15 years. From our experience, the most innovative companies are combining the following “ingredients” to form their approach to Supply Chain design:

  • They identify challenges and business opportunities in their existing Supply Chain
  • They ensure that the technology, powered by AI and machine learning, fits the maturity of the company
  • They create a dynamic data model with internal and external data sources
  • They tailor the solution with a personalized experience for anyone in the organization
  • They ensure C-suite commitment and engagement as well as a growth mindset
  • They build governance processes and structures that support an ongoing refinement of the optimal Supply Chain design
  • They continuously invest in building skills and competences

If you are looking for a partner to take your Supply Chain design to new heights, we urge you to contact us. We would love to have an informal discussion about the business benefits you are looking to achieve and how we can help you achieve them.

In the meantime, feel free to download the below checklist. It can help you determine what your future Supply Chain design model should cover and what business benefits it can provide you.

Download checklist

You can reduce the time to develop and deploy new Supply Chain design with up to 80% if you use Supply Chain design technology as an enabler. In this blogpost you can learn more about how. 

Persistent challenges from increasing customer demands, disruptive competitors, and economic fluctuations make the optimization of Supply Chain designs harder. Various megatrends mean, that Supply Chain complexity and risk are growing. Decision making speed and quality need to increase to enable faster recovery from disruptions. At the same time, there is a need to handle real-time data and complex business requirements across multiple networks. At the same time it is necessary to balance risks and trade-offs. Learn more about how you can turn your Supply Chain design into a competitive advantage with technology in this blogpost.

The greatest risks lie in the Supply Chain
Supply Chains are increasingly at risk of disruption. It can be argued that the greatest risk to business continuity lies in the wider Supply Chain of key suppliers and customers (supply/demand networks) rather than within the company itself. As Supply Chain networks increase in complexity because of outsourcing, globalization, and trading environment volatility, so too has the risk of disruption. The vulnerability of networks has increased because of longer, leaner supply lines within the networks.

While many risks to the Supply Chain come from the external environment, such as war, pandemics, and earthquakes, there is growing evidence that the Supply Chain structure is itself the source of significant risk. The same events that once might have caused minor local disruptions may now affect entire businesses, industries, or economies. At the same time, we know that 80% of the costs come from the design of the Supply Chain.

The ideals of a fully integrated, efficient, and effective Supply Chain
The challenge of the Supply or Operations manager is to achieve the ideals of fully integrated, efficient, and effective Supply Chains capable of creating and sustaining competitive advantages. They must balance downward cost pressures and the need for efficiency with effective ways to manage the demands of market-driven service requirements. At the same time, they need to ensure a resilient and transparent Supply Chain.

By democratizing the processes and thereby reducing functional and data silos, creating an environment for constant learning, using a Supply Chain digital twin to visualize the current Supply Chain and advanced algorithms to model the future, there is an opportunity for ambitious companies to move from episodic one-off design reviews to a state of continuous design. To many, that means transforming from a manual approach to a digital one. 

Time to develop and deploy can be reduced by up to 80%
From our experience, when Supply Chains are designed to adapt and evolve, companies are prepared to make tradeoffs, optimize policies, develop scenarios, and accelerate the time between making and executing decisions. We typically see a reduction in time to develop and deploy optimized solutions by up to 80%. Leaders are empowered to make the best decisions based on valuable Supply Chain intelligence. At the end of the day, it benefits the bottom line and gives the flexibility to manage constant change and risk.

 

Checkout the below graphic which simplifies the time it takes to develop and deploy a model: 

Download whitepaper to learn more about supply chain design

Companies have been using Supply Chain network optimization solutions to solve complex operational challenges and improve their Supply Chains for years. While a select few have successfully leveraged the potential benefits of these analytics tools, many have only scratched the surface. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of Supply Chain network optimization, many companies don’t have a clear strategy. In this blogpost we will look into why Supply Chain optimization also should be a strategic priority for your company.

The definition of Supply Chain optimization
Supply Chain optimization is defined as “the deliberate application of advanced analytical processes and solutions to optimize supply chain performance and manage costs,” not as a general concept or management goal. Advanced analytics helps business managers look beyond what happened in the past, and develop predictive and prescriptive models of what could happen, given a certain set of parameters.

Optimization solutions can be applied to daily challenges, like adjusting inventory levels based on lead time and service level targets. They can be used for more cyclical challenges, like modeling optimum inventory locations or managing new product introductions. And finally, they can be applied to larger strategic decisions such as distribution network changes, where to locate new facilities and acquisitions. Some companies also now use it to decarbonize their Supply Chain.

Getting off to a good start
Supply Chain network optimization projects or modelling often start with and depend upon the gathering of relevant and timely data to model the potential impact of changes and allow managers to make better decisions. They sometimes start with developing a model that addresses the targeted business challenge, and then move to data collection, speeding up the data gathering and filtering phase of such projects. With either approach, data quality is essential.

Today’s advanced analytics and optimization tools have become easier to deploy because of expanded data availability, more user-friendly interfaces, faster hardware and cloud-based solutions, which replace high up-front investments with more periodic expenses. Solution capabilities have likewise expanded.

Supply Chain network optimization an important technology trend
Leadership in any area of business is a function of management focus and investment. The Supply Chain is no different. While the bar is continually being raised, current Supply Chain performance at any company (both in terms of customer service and cost) is in large part of a strategic choice. For example, for business reasons management may accept higher supply chain costs in exchange for superior customer service; or they may accept lower service levels in exchange for lower costs. The underlying assumption is “you get what you pay for.” In contrast, Supply Chain leaders reject these standard tradeoffs by pushing for both superior service and lower costs. Such a strategy is reflected by management attention and capital investments, including the adoption of supply chain optimization solutions.

A significant majority of manufacturers agree, in a report made by IndustryWeek, that Supply Chain optimization is an important technology trend. It is critical to the future success of their companies. Despite that recognition, less than half (44%) believe their company has a clear and effective supply chain optimization strategy. For any investment that reduces costs and improves performance, early adoption can provide a market advantage.

Does your company have a clear strategy for Supply Chain network optimization?

This article was written with the inspiration from a research done by our partner FICO and Industryweek.
(2016 IndustryWeek Supply Chain Optimization Research Study, underwritten by FICO)

Download Supply Chain design checklist

All things supply chain.

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