Bill of Materials in Excel, Planning, ERP and PLM/BMMS Software Screenshots and examples from Arena Solutions, PlanetTogether, SAP, and Demand Works. What the Book is About The ability to manage BOM information has never been more exceptional. However, the vast majority of companies are missing out on this opportunity! Focusing on a significant area of weakness at most…
Supply Chain Forecasting Software Screenshots and examples from ToolsGroup, Demand Works, Consensus Point, Right90, and Inkling Markets. What the Book is About This book explains the essential aspects of supply chain forecasting. The book is designed to allow the reader to get more out of their current forecasting system, as well as explain some of…
Executive Summary The State of Master Data in Supply Chain Planning Systems. What Approach has Tended to Work Versus those that Have not Worked? Why There are So Many Opportunities to Improve Master Data in Supply Chain Planning Systems. Introduction The state of master data concerning supply chain planning systems offers a continual opportunity for…
Inventory Optimization and Multi-Echelon Planning Software Screenshots and examples from MCA Solutions/Servigistics, ToolsGroup, Logility, and SmartOps. What The Book Covers This book explains the emerging technology of inventory optimization and multi-echelon (MEIO) supply planning. It takes a complex subject and effectively communicates what MEIO is about in plain English terms. This is the only book…
Supply Planning with MRP, DRP and APS Software Screenshots and examples from JDA, SAP, Demand Works and Barloworld, PlanetTogether, and MATLAB (PlanetTogether is not a supply planning system, but is used in the book to demonstrate heuristic adjusted optimization. MATLAB is used to illustrate the use of an external optimizer.) Reviews “Enterprise software solutions for…
Executive Summary Areas that roll into forecast accuracy should be separately measured. Forecast errors can be used to provide a direction for improvement. Video Introduction: Forecast Improvement Estimation Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video) There is a lot of poor quality advice on how to improve forecast accuracy. For example, software vendors tend…
Executive Summary Why hierarchy combination can be important. The importance of keeping the hierarchy in the receiving demand planning system. Introduction In several articles, I have described the importance of recognizing that many very popular enterprise demand planning applications are not good enough at aggregation and disaggregation to make it worthwhile to attempt to perform…
Executive Summary The SNP optimizer has two types of methods of deployment. The deployment optimizer has major problems with the second method, which is called cost optimization. The deployment optimizer cannot fair sharing stock to locations. This topic is hidden by SAP and SAP consulting companies from customers. Introduction to Optimization in APO In its…
Executive Summary Demand sensing and demand shaping are two methods that are often promoted to improve forecasting. However, one of these methods is barely ever applied. The other is not a way of improving the forecast but is presented as one by vendors. Introduction Demand planning always has new terms in supply chain forecasting that…
Executive Summary What is the downward slope for SAP Solution Manager or SAP SolMan? The changing story of SAP Solution Manager or SAP SolMan. This article was updated as of October 2019. Solution Manager has now moved into decommissioned status. Introduction SAP introduces products with great fanfare but does not do an excellent job of…