I suffer from a recurring dream. In that dream, I am standing in front of 300 Stock Controllers explaining how an external baseline will work alongside causal forecasting. The results of this will generate a Simple Exponential Smoothing forecast which in turn will produce auto sourced algorithms over your Bayesian plan. “Don’t worry though,”...
Sometime during the 20th century sales forecasting went from being a necessary part of someone’s job to being someone’s entire job. Sales forecasting, has made the move from being only 1 step in the inventory/production analyst’s planning to a forecaster’s full time position. This is definitely good news for those of us who wanted to...
Businesses go through change frequently and as we all know, change is difficult because we are human. Change and transformation are necessary for companies to adapt and improve, but in order for change to be effective, many factors need to be addressed simultaneously. Take demand planning and forecasting for example. If you work for...
We all know that you should measure processes. There is a lot of literature written on this subject, and most companies now have some sort of Lean or Six Sigma program and quality management system that requires processes to be measured for evaluation and improvement purposes. Control is another big aspect of metrics. One...
Our ability to forecast was met with increasing skepticism in 2010 – and this is a good thing. A decade ago, the thrill of technological innovation provided hope that more data, bigger computers, and fancier models would one day solve all our forecasting problems. Yet we now have more data, bigger computers, and fancier...
Last night while I was at the joint APICS/IBF/CSCMP Holiday Networking Collaborative in Boston, MA these three words came to mind, “Strength in numbers.” But before I can explain these three simple words, I should first explain all the abbreviations, right? APICS is the Association for Operations Management, IBF is the Institute of Business...
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...
Teamwork, collaboration, transparency and increased profitability. Sounds like some Disney Magic, right? Well based on the experiences shared from the panel at the Institute of Business Forecasting & Planning’s kickoff event on Sunday dubbed the ‘Advanced S&OP Practices Forum’ it’s in fact real and achievable. The panel, which was an opening to IBF’s Supply...
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...
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...