Powerfully Simple Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning (SI&OP)

A Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process can help businesses align demand and supply for increased profitability.

But uncertainties in the supply chain can confound even the best planning. Demand forecasts are often off target. Product lead times vary. Production schedules change regularly. To make the S&OP process more robust, companies can buffer for these supply chain uncertainties by adding an inventory optimization step to the process, making it SIOP.

Our planning and optimization software allows the cross-functional management team to define desired target customer service levels, by product segment and market segment. The software then translates these service level goals into an optimal inventory mix that absorbs the upstream and downstream supply chain fluctuations.

This optimized inventory mix both helps the business meet service level targets and allows it to accomplish them with less inventory. In addition, the software allows the team to make fact-based trade-offs in the planning process. They can understand and manage the interdependency between target service level and inventory investment in determining the best way to achieve their business objectives. 

Planning is iterative and cross-functional, focused on helping organizations make trade-offs against the same objective function as defined by the strategy. And most important, due to robust modelling, the plan is feasible.
For a complete description of our time-phased capacity constrained Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning solution and our customer experience, please contact the ToolsGroup office nearest you.

For a complete description of our Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning solution and our customer experience, please contact the ToolsGroup office nearest you.