Faced with a changing geopolitical environment and capability challenges, the aerospace and defense supply chain need to reinvent itself. This industry has traditionally adopted classic MRP planning methods and has sometimes injected a little Lean at production cell level, but has not really designed a steering model adapted to its challenges. The result is that, … Read more
Investing in turmoil You’re an investor, involved in the industry. Perhaps you’re part of a private equity fund. Or perhaps you’re evaluating the possible acquisition of a new entity for your company. These are times of exceptional uncertainty, and you’re wondering how your investment portfolio will evolve. As economic and geopolitical conditions change from one … Read more
While browsing the website of a supply chain planning solution rated “leader” by Gartner, I came across the workflow below, designated as a reference for IBP best practices. I won’t give the name of the solution in question for charity’s sake, but you should know that it’s very expensive and has been adopted by some … Read more
To ensure plant performance and productivity, all you need to do is ensure that the flow flows naturally and without friction through the manufacturing stages. As soon as something is missing, we stop-and-go, and this deteriorates operational performance. We’re missing something, we have to put aside what we’d planned to do, we stop to solve … Read more
Anticipating capacity constraints in an industrial company is an essential but delicate exercise, and one that is rarely properly carried out and equipped. What is RCCP? According to ASCM, RCCP (Rough Cut Capacity Planning) is the process of converting the master production schedule into key resource requirements, usually in terms of manpower, machinery, warehouse space, … Read more
A Smarter Approach to Planning & Scheduling In today’s fast-paced and unpredictable market, businesses must align operations with fluctuating demand while maintaining efficiency and resilience. Traditional APS systems have often failed due to their complexity, rigid optimization models, and excessive focus on cost reduction at the expense of operational flow. Intuiflow takes a fundamentally different … Read more
The virtues of anticipation As supply chain professionals, we’ve all been trained to think ahead. Forecasting sales, foreseeing capacities, material requirements, personnel needs – a good part of our activity is devoted, quite rightly, to anticipation. Of course, this is absolutely necessary: we need to prepare our company to meet future needs. Anticipating doesn’t mean … Read more
A effect bullwhip with no apparent cause. The bullwhip effect: supply chain practitioners know this phenomenon well – a slight change in demand downstream can create large fluctuations upstream, and conversely small delays upstream can create a catastrophe for downstream partners in the chain. In many cases, we are subjected to these shocks without understanding their … Read more
A recurring question is: what are the prerequisites for deploying Demand Driven tactics in the supply chain? Will it work with our ERP? Does this apply to our company? Do we first need to get a better grip on our MRP? I’ve heard this provocative answer from Carol Ptak several times: if you don’t have … Read more
2014: Do You Know VUCA? When I started arguing with companies about the relevance of Demand Driven tactics eleven years ago, I had to explain the volatile business environment at some length. “Today’s environment is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, so we need to develop supply chain agility and resilience. It is illusory to … Read more
Understanding Good vs. Bad Stock When you work in any industry that deals with products, you quickly realize that inventory management is a complicated process. Businesses constantly struggle to find the right balance—do they need more stock, or is it better to reduce it? How much is too much? How little is too little? These … Read more
Urban legend has it that we need a very accurate forecast. Of course, we know that this won’t happen, as actual demand will differ from forecasts. Nevertheless, major efforts are being made to improve forecast accuracy in demand-driven planning. For the sake of curiosity, let’s take a look at an item replenished using a Demand … Read more
