S&OP tool: Workbench enables quick supply chain planning decisions
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 2/15/2008 10:29:00 AM
An application that promises to reduce the time it takes to make decisions in sales and operations planning (S&OP) meetings has been released by Supply Chain Consultants.
The company says the new solution—called S&OP Azimuth—has been incorporated as a workbench inside its Zemeter supply chain management software suite.
Sujit Singh, COO of Supply Chain Consultants, says S&OP Azimuth gives organizations the tools to integrate data from many systems—including spreadsheets—and perform “what-if” scenarios during executive S&OP meetings. Singh says this application will allow management to answer important questions during S&OP meetings without reconvening for multiple iterations.
“S&OP Azimuth addresses the ever-present challenge that many companies face in compiling data from different areas within the organization and translating it into useful information for making supply chain decisions,” Singh says. “This tool will greatly enhance the ability of those responsible for the S&OP process to compile and summarize the data required for a successful S&OP meeting. Using the S&OP Azimuth workbench, data is instantly available, allowing executives and planners to make critical supply chain decisions that affect the financial health of the organization.”
According to Singh, S&OP Azimuth allows organizations to do the following:
• Read demand plans from any system and display them by S&OP family, along with historical performance;
• Read supply plans from any system, or use built-in rough-cut capacity planning;
• Summarize demand, supply, and financials for pre-S&OP demand meetings, pre-S&OP supply meetings, and executive S&OP meetings;
• Translate S&OP families to manufacturing families for capacity planning;
• Display used and available capacity;
• Use color coding to highlight any special situations, such as planned capacity usage greater than 100 percent for a production family.
Singh says S&OP Azimuth’s rough-cut capacity planning feature allows companies to easily schedule demand at a push of a button, while ignoring capacity limitations, to illustrate any shortfalls in capacity or excess capacity available. At the push of another button, he says, all capacity can be limited to 100 percent, highlighting any unmet demand or less-than-target inventories. Planners can then add extra shifts or make other adjustments to ensure that demand is met. Inventories are projected over time at the S&OP family level, both in dollars and in volume, for comparison to target levels.
