Planning and Sales & Operations Design

The fundamental objectives of supply chain planning – excellent customer service and a well-managed cost structure – are the same for most organizations.

But every enterprise has a unique set of conditions that define the best route to meeting those objectives. To get started in the right direction, decision makers need to consider these basic questions:

• Is the organization centralized or decentralized?
• Is the supply chain global or regional?
• Are the company’s products seasonal? Is demand consistent?
• How are supplies and finished goods shipped – air, sea, rail, truck?
• Does the enterprise purchase finished goods or control an end-to-end supply chain including manufacturing?
• Who owns the demand forecast – Sales or Operations?

The answers to these questions and others help define the best demand-supply planning processes, technologies, policies and metrics to achieve an organization’s business goals.

At Spinnaker, our consultants have the experience needed to help clients uncover the right answers and develop the approach to planning that incorporates best practices – while considering the unique situation of each company.

Align and Coordinate Operational, Sales, and Financial Plans with Sales and Operations Planning

As a consulting partner with breadth across strategic, process, and technology consulting in the supply chain space, Spinnaker provides a full toolset to both design improved S&OP strategies and implement the tools and processes required to make these designs a reality.

Our approach uses S&OP as a framework to manage and coordinate the different planning activities required to run a business. These may combine financial planning, long-term supply chain planning, new product introduction, demand management, supply planning and collaborative planning with customers and suppliers to develop optimized cross-functional plans and quickly resolve demand-supply imbalances and misalignments across the plans.

We’ve worked with many major corporations to implement or improve their S&OP processes. In every case, the client has dramatically increased the organization’s ability to manage and control disconnects between supply and demand and improve overall corporate planning.

Optimize End-to-End Demand-Supply Management

Within a Spinnaker S&OP framework, each process supports a category of strategic, tactical, and execution-level decision making. With consideration of the context of the supply chain being planned, Spinnaker’s consultants help clients determine the right approach, policies, metrics, and tools to support these decision-making processes.

• Demand Planning
• Network Design and Sourcing
• Capacity Planning
• Inventory Planning
• Supply Planning
• Order Promising

Designed by consultants with significant experience implementing planning improvements with numerous companies, the processes we develop with our clients are created with consideration of both what best practices make possible and what circumstances make prudent.

Contact us today to find out how Spinnaker can help your enterprise optimize supply chain planning performance.