Search Results for: supply-planning

  • SCM Books

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … Multi Echelon Software
    This books explains the emerging technology of inventory optimization and multi echelon (MEIO) supply planning. The book describes with text and graphics how inventory optimization allows the entire supply plan to be controlled with service levels, and how multi echelon technology answers the question of where to locate inventory in the supply network. The only book on inventory optimization and multi echelon planning which compares how different best of breed vendors apply MEIO technology to their products, it also explains why this technology is so important for supply planning and why companies should be actively investigating this

  • The Rise and Decline of Supply Chain Cost Optimization

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … As is evident from our example above, this experience is more extensive than merely SAP APO. In working on many cost optimization accounts over the years and in conferring with other individuals who have worked in the area for some time, I have concluded how costs are set in both supply planning and production planning implementations.

    The graphic above describes major elements of cost optimization that apply to supply planning.
    Implicit Versus Explicit Costs
    Cost optimizers use both explicit and implicit costs to generate the plan. During the software selection stage, this tends to be covered from a surface level …

  • Understanding APO and Sales and Operations Planning

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … S&OP process. As an aggregated planning tool with supply, demand, and production modeling capabilities, sometimes it is expected that SAP APO has S&OP capabilities.
    Is SAP APO Used for APO?
    In fact, APO is not itself an S&OP tool. But as is most often the case, the supply planning, demand planning, and production planning applications perform the heavy lifting and then provide extracts to an S&OP tool like Steelwedge or a series of spreadsheets used in the S&OP process.
    Some projects are that data feeds such as the constrained long-term plan are being exported …

  • How to Best Understand Inventory Optimization

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … one additional item at every product location combination. And then sorts the list of options by their contribution to the level of service levels and selects the best contributor.
    Where Inventory Optimization Fits into the Supply Chain Planning Software Space

    As you can see, MEIO is its own category of supply planning and is one of the three primary methods of supply planning.
    MEIO is the most recently developed method and is also the least understood among supply chain professionals.

    The Definition Of Inventory Optimization

    Inventory optimization is the derivation of stocking levels throughout the supply planning network based on …

  • Why SAP SPP Continues to Have Implementation Problems

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … have re-stated that this is their strategy and that they think it is gaining purchase with clients.
    The Partnership with MCA
    The second part of their strategy was to partner with the best-of-breed service parts planning company MCA Solutions and created a “xApp” that combined the forecasting functionality of MCA SPO with the supply planning portion of SPP. I have written previously that I am very much opposed to these types of arrangements for many reasons.
    There are several thorny issues with these partnerships.
    It’s unclear that vendors should be selecting vendors of clients. The …

  • Why Shelf Life Planning in SNP Does Not Work

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … whether the functionality would work.
    Shelf Life Status
    After having performed the research and discussed with SAP, it has been verified that the shelf life functionality does not work in the current version of SCM and is unlikely to work in future versions for the heuristic and CTM methods of supply planning. As for the optimizer, the following paragraph was taken from SAP Help.
    “The SNP optimizer can also take into account the shelf life of a product but in a restricted way. At no point in time does it try to plan more on-hand stock of this product …

  • How to Understand The Storage Buckets Profile and The Planning Buckets Profile

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … the storage buckets profile. Having created planning bucket profiles, you use them to define the future planning horizon and the past horizon by entering them in a planning book: one for the future planning horizon and one for the past horizon. The system displays the horizons in interactive demand and supply planning by starting with the smallest time bucket and finishing with the largest time bucket. The future horizon starts with the smallest time bucket, on the planning horizon start date, and works forwards, finishing with the largest time bucket. The past horizon starts with the smallest time bucket the …

  • How to Understand SmartOps MIPO

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … level changes. It also has an alert system, which can be evaluated after each simulation run. Unlike some of the other solutions in this space, MIPO does not perform forecasting, (although their DIM (Demand Intelligence Module) does, however, MIPO uses the forecast to calculate how products will be treated in supply planning.
    Thus MIPO requires the forecast from either the ERP system or planning system.
    The SmartOps Software Design
    After MIPO performs its calculations, SmartOps integrates to either the SAP execution or planning system by sending either parameter(s) that populate the material master in SAP ERP or actual safety …

  • How to Better Understand Effective Lead Time

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … of effective lead-time for the first time through MCA Solutions’ manuals, and I certainly did not understand effective lead-time the first time I was exposed to it. Since then, I have written several articles positioning effective lead-time as the foundational concept of multi-echelon planning. No other supply planning method (MRP/DRP, heuristic, allocation, or cost optimization) has this concept or capability, and as such, none are as efficient at locating inventory as MEIO applications.
    Effective Lead Time Versus The “Normal” Lead Time Concept
    Effective lead-time is not the standard static lead-time between two locations …

  • How to Understand Customer Versus Order Prioritization and in SAP CTM

    ByPrimary Researcher

    … the pegging is set in the CTM Profile.
    The CTM ProfilAsAs with all the methods in SNPCTM , CTM allows you to save a profile, which is a very detailed and particular way of running CTM. By saving multiple copies of different CTM Profiles, different ways to apply CTM to the supply planning data. There are many tabs of configuration settings in CTM, as this article describes. However, in this article, I will focus on those related to priority.
    A CTM Profile has a Planning Scope tab. This is where the demand selection profile and the supply selection profile are selected …