I have been following Jeff Ashcroft’s informative tweets and interacting with him for some time now even though we never actually met in person prior to last month. It was at the IBF booth at the APICS annual conference last month when Jeff approached us unassumingly. As soon as I looked up and saw...
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I recently returned from Mexico City from our Spanish based Supply Chain Forecasting & Planning Conference: Latin American Experiences, produced together with Corporate Resources Management – Mexico City and IBF – New York USA. As the IBF continues to deliver more International programs, it is clear that many of the challenges we face in...
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How many times have you been in a Pre-S&OP meeting that seems to drag on and tie up several high end people who are already overloaded? S&OP is a great and vital process, but sometimes parts of it can be unnecessarily time consuming. This can especially be the case when an organization is implementing ...
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A few years ago I found myself reviewing an Institute of Business Forecasting & Planning – IBF presentation that I was going to give the next day when I realized that I had used the word knowledge about five times in just the first few slides. I sat back for a moment and realized...
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As readers know, we basically have two ways of doing forecasting: 1. Extrapolating from historical trends – univariate forecasting (ie. Time Series Forecasting) 2. Including independent variables such as price that we believe influence movements in sales – causal modeling or regression modeling Comparing the two approaches, the chief advantage of univariate forecasting is...
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When a customer calls for that product item that almost no one ever asks for, do you have it? If your answer is no, it could cost you a sale, or even a customer. Equally important, if that item is only occasionally requested, do you have too many units of the product on-hand to...
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Have you ever been sitting in the perfect S&OP meeting…..slides were clear and crisp….all data were accurate….each business area presented their numbers well…….but at the end of the meeting, you still knew that the most obvious issue on a key product line was not being addressed because it was not clear where the responsibility...
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Many organizations today are implementing various continuous improvement techniques to manufacturing areas to reduce cost and waste as well as decreasing cycle time. There is value to apply these techniques to business processes to improve the effectiveness of the process. Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a critical business process and therefore is a...
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As we ease out of crisis mode and plan for more stable waters, we find ourselves asking how can we take advantage of the upturn, and what will it take to do so? Going back to my undergraduate days of pursuing my degree in Education makes me think of the structure of a lesson...
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Developing accurate forecasts is never easy. The current economic environment makes it even more challenging and many businesses have a bias to over forecast. At the same time, businesses need the most accurate volume forecast possible to enable effective planning and decision making. It is important to understand that this is a business issue,...
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