Project Challenge

Educate, build, and align the team around integrated planning best practices, and what is needed to support and eventually grow into a world-class S&OP process.

Solution

Our recently hired Sponsor from consumer products (an industry known for expertise in S&OP) knew what good looked like and saw that the current environment was far from it. It was clear that the team would not get off the hamster wheel without major change in the organization. Costs were rising, customer service was declining, and expectations across the organization were not aligned.

Nexview started with an assessment that aligned the team around the baseline state, illustrated what the future could look like, and with the client, developed a business case that produced an attractive ROI for a major change project. We also trained the organization on S&OP and with a very supportive CEO, the team committed to it.

We quickly designed and launched a comprehensive S&OP process across two distinct business units, each with unique requirements, while integrating finance to ensure a unified plan—”one number.” Underneath the S&OP layer, we implemented a real demand planning process, which required the addition of an experienced hire. On the supply side, we introduced an objective methodology to determine make-to-order vs. make-to-stock and evaluated the current portfolio moving several items to make-to-order. Aside from production associated with highly-customized products, make-to-order had not existed in the business before, and now enables the business to serve customers competitively and more knowledgeably, while reducing obsolete inventory and aligning the organization around expectations. The project supported the above process changes with a cost-effective, yet capable commercial demand planning system as well as automated S&OP and KPI reporting.

Outcomes

After a few monthly S&OP cycles with our support, we left the team with a successful implementation that included an agreed results tracking system and a comprehensive S&OP maturity tracking system. With quick wins, dollar benefits were already significantly exceeding target, and the team had made measurable progress on the maturity scale.

Summary:

• Implemented S&OP across 2 international business units (4 step cadence in this design)
• Demand Planning implemented
• Make-to-order vs. make-to-stock methodology implemented, transition in progress at project conclusion
• Incremental additional production planning improvements
• Organizational roles and responsibilities implemented
• Financial integration
• KPIs throughout implemented, executive accountability agreed, some KPIs improving
• Implemented Demand Planning system, S&OP and KPI reporting automated
• Benefits exceeding target by more than 50%