With the rise in competition, the need to reduce costs and eliminate inventories has increased for companies. They need to link their production and procurement activities more tightly with the actual demand to sustain themselves in the market. An effective supply chain planning enables companies to keep their production and demand in sync and address customer demands.
Moreover, with collaborative planning in the supply chain, companies can consolidate sales, production, inventory and purchasing information, and become more demand-driven depending upon the real demand. Following such an approach makes companies more responsive by enabling them to perform simultaneous material and capacity planning tasks across multiple facilities and time horizons. Furthermore, it can help them to execute holistic plans, spanning from long-term aggregate planning to short-term detailed schedules.
At SpendEdge, we understand the impact that competitive supply chain planning can have on businesses. Therefore, our team of experts has highlighted a few critical steps that are needed for achieving competitive supply chain planning.
Want to know how an effective supply chain management system can increase the efficacy of your organization? Get in touch with our experts today!
How to achieve competitive supply chain planning?
#1 Move planning closer to demand
Supply chain planning allows companies to shift their planning processes closer to demand by synchronizing production and purchasing activities with the actual demand. This enables companies to increase responsiveness, address changes in the market, and transform themselves into demand-driven organizations. Also, with demand-based supply chain planning, companies can easily decrease inventory levels and improve customer service.
#2 Synchronize supply chain planning with enterprise planning
By synchronizing supply chain planning with the wider business planning process, companies can wisely optimize profitability if in case any unlikely event or situation occurs. They can even deploy sales and operations planning (S&OP) solutions to improve enterprise-wide collaboration.
Wondering how to synchronize supply chain planning activities with enterprise planning?
#3 Improve demand visibility
Supply chain planning aggregates forecasts and sales orders created by customers and local sales offices and improves visibility into enterprise-wise demand. This allows companies and their management to analyze the kind of demand being generated in the company. This demand can further be adjusted based on the accuracy of the various demand streams.
#4 Create supply chain resilience
Supply chain planning helps companies to plan and react quickly in case of supply chain disruptions. This increases the profitability of organizations and helps them to recover operational capabilities after the disruption has happened. Also, it helps in better product positioning and helps companies to gain substantial benefits from disruptions.
