Tag: S and OP - Demand Driven Technologies

Developing Intuitive S&OP Processes

January 25, 2022 by Bernard Milian

Associating intuition and S&OP processes may seem… counterintuitive, right? For most companies that practice it, the S&OP process involves gathering information, facts, and hypotheses to analyze and then use to develop an action plan — a roadmap for negotiating changes in the coming months. It’s all about data crunching, logical reasoning, putting together elements from … Read more

How Long Will It Take to Make Your Supply Chain Agile?

November 2, 2021 by Bernard Milian

Under the shocks of the last two years, many companies have realized that they were suffering from structural weaknesses in their operations. The pandemic has put pressure on them to review certain processes. For example, there has been an increased focus on uncertainty in S&OP, because who would believe that in a pandemic and lock … Read more

Why Managing by Exception is Key to Supply Chain Efficiency

July 8, 2024October 26, 2021 by Bernard Milian

warning symbol - supply chain efficiency

Every planner today has hundreds or even thousands of references to manage. Often, these references must be synchronized during the assembly of products with complex bills of materials, where the slightest shortfall stops the flow. If you manufacture an electronic assembly with hundreds of components, a simple diode that costs nothing can stop everything. How … Read more

Harmonizing Intuition and Data-Driven Approaches in Managing Supply Chain Complexity

August 15, 2023September 7, 2021 by Bernard Milian

What happens in our brain when we exercise our intuition? A French scientific magazine recently devoted a fascinating dossier to intuition (Science & Vie, August 2021 https://www.science-et-vie.com/archives/n-1247 ). It appears in particular that intuition is the automatic implementation by our brain of knowledge accumulated in our long-term memory. Far from being a random and therefore unreliable process, … Read more

End-to-End Supply Chain Planning in an Upstream/Downstream Organization

August 31, 2021August 31, 2021 by Bernard Milian

For small and medium enterprises, the question of upstream supply chain vs. downstream supply chain management does not arise. The factory is in direct contact with the company’s customers, and the supply chain team handles the end-to-end planning process: sales forecasts, order taking, production planning, procurement, inventory management and distribution. In large, multi-site groups, things … Read more

How to Simplify a Complex Supply Chain

June 29, 2021January 19, 2021 by Bernard Milian

If you live in an industrial or distribution environment, chances are that your product portfolios have multiplied over the last ten or twenty years. Marketing differentiation, personalization, configured items, depth of distribution networks: these are possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of references to manage. In other words, there are tens or hundreds of thousands of references … Read more

6 Keys to a Successful DDMRP Supply Chain Transformation

June 29, 2021January 12, 2021 by Bernard Milian

DDMRP implementation has long been the domain of experimentation, pilots and deployments of limited scope. With a few exceptions, small and medium-sized enterprises, with faster decision-making processes, were the first a few years ago to adopt the methodology, as well as isolated sites of larger companies. Over the past two to three years, a new … Read more

Pull Flow Systems for All

June 29, 2021October 26, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Pull Flow, an Old Story…

In 1987, as a young engineer at Philips, I had the chance to take part in a study trip to Japan and visit about ten companies there. In most of them you could see in each workshop card boards. In one of the factories I asked our guide what it was. He was astonished that I asked the question – it was so obvious: it is a Kanban board, to replenish supplies. That is normal. It was a non-event, a practice that was not questioned, had been in place for decades… but almost absent at the time from our western factories. Kanban dates to the ’50s. Drum-buffer-rope dates back to the ’80s. These are old concepts. Are they adapted to our modern, technological age?

S&OP, Stop Looking For a Consensus on the Set of Numbers!

June 29, 2021May 26, 2020 by Bernard Milian

Sales & Operations Planning is an important process in most companies. Yet, with the increased volatility in supply and demand, it’s easy to wonder, “What’s the point?”

How to Manage a Demand Driven Recovery From This Crisis

October 17, 2022May 12, 2020 by Bernard Milian

You have implemented all or part of the Demand Driven operating model to drive your operations, so you should be prepared to deal with situations of uncertainty.

However, the current period presents an unprecedented level of disruption.

Materials Planning

Sales & Operations Planning

Scheduling & Execution Planning

Demand Planning

Auto Pilot