This past week the mighty LA Lakers, were swept by the Dallas Mavericks in four games. The Lakers had won two straight NBA titles and were favorites of many to three-peat. Immediately after the 4th loss, which turned out to be one of the five worst losses of series deciding games in the history...
Having worked in the industry, we all know that Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is all about mega decisions being made by executives about issues such as building factories, authorizing inventory or hiring people for major projects. We also know that executive decisions are made with limited information and, especially in the world of...
Last night I had the pleasure of previewing the International Auto Show at the Jacob Javitz Center courtesy of Ford and the Social Media Club of New York City/ SMCNYC. We were certainly warmly welcomed as we were treated to a cocktail reception and a great networking opportunity with not only social media...
The Background… Throughout a financially turbulent 2009, the Supply Chain at Electrocomponents plc needed to better integrate into the business and become more intelligent, agile and effective. Just two years into our long-term transformation journey, our key innovations have been to: Introduce formal forecasting. Embed leading Supply Chain thinking including demand planning and SIOP...
Forecasting & Planning Professionals strive to reduce error in their work. For all this effort, what is the reward? When asked what the cost of forecast error is, most discussions turn to the consequential impact of inaccurate forecasts. Consequential impacts include lost sales and profits, expedited freight, excess and obsolete inventory, and unhappy customers....
Trading Places The storyline is an old one. It was the theme of the 1983 American comedy titled Trading Places starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. You may remember it; It is one of my favorite funny movies in which an upper class commodities broker and a homeless street hustler switch roles when they...
I came to work at SONY 16 years ago with lots of passion and energy. I worked across several countries and held many different responsibilities from marketing to finance to supply chain. Now, at my present vocation, being operations director at SONY, I find myself responsible for many different areas of the business. My...
The IBF’s 10th annual Supply Chain Forecasting and Planning Conference turned out to be an incredible three days at the Villas of Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando, Florida. We kicked things off with a spectacular golf outing where we got to meet new friends and enjoyed the summer like conditions. We all did our...
I started my demand planning career in the summer of 2008. Looking back, I know now that this turned out to be the worst possible time to break into the field. At Ingersoll Rand, we were just starting to feel the initial pains of ‘The Great Recession’, but our system forecasts did not provide...
If the answer to this question appears to be obvious, please read on! There’s been lots of discussion about how forecasting is done, but much less about what is forecasted. Now, this is an important issue for all forecasters, but none more so than Supply Chain forecasters. Let’s suppose you’re using a particular forecasting...