QUESTION 

Evaluate integrated systems to plan for future demand and
evaluate a sales and operations plan (S&OP) as a tactical method
to increase visibility in supply chains.

ANSWERS

The process within which an organization optimizes its capabilities and resources for the betterment of competition in an international market is known as global supply chain resource planning (GSCRP) and management. It is implementable across various organizational functions like customer service, logistics, and manufacturing. A firm that seeks to develop a successful GSCRP strategy must clearly understand its weaknesses and strengths. Furthermore, it must account for customer and stakeholder needs in the management and planning of international supply chains. GSCRP and management are attached to numerous benefits, the main one being the capability to enhance corporate competitiveness and efficiency. Similarly, organizations can maximize resource utilization, enhance customer satisfaction, and control costs. An organization should clearly understand its resources and capabilities for an effective GSCRP and management implementation.

Understanding the Sales and Operations Planning Process

Companies benefit immensely when the supply chain has increased visibility, a tactical method consistent with the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. The procedure helps to connect operations plans with marketing and sales plans (Roscoe et al., 2020). It aims to ensure that a company has the appropriate capacity and resource levels to sustain customer needs. The process is continuous and is regularly subjected to monthly reviews and updates. A sales forecast is among the preliminary stages aimed at developing inventory levels and production plans, which in turn help to form a financial plan. Every decision about funding, capital expenditure, and investments is made through the financial plan. A good way of evaluating the integrated systems to strategize for the oncoming demands is through S&OP, realized through the sales forecast analysis and applying it in production plans development. Financial plans and inventory levels cannot stand without the production plan.

Originally from India, Suresh Dalai's current residence is based in Singapore, where he works in retail operations. For over two decades, he has worked in retail for companies like Ermenegildo Zegna and Levi Strauss and as a Kurt Salmon Associates consultant, where he implemented S&OP industry standards in the United States and Asia (Eby 2017). People, procedure, and actual implementation are what he suggests prioritizing. Establishing a highly cross-functional implementation is crucial, with representatives from several departments providing input.

Role clarification and responsibilities, creating a safe space for honest feedback, and ensuring everyone know their contribution is crucial in a seamless handover process of the final good are all ways to get individuals involved in the procedure. Dalai believes it is essential to describe the entire procedure from beginning to end and to specify people to take responsibility for what. Those to offer consultation and be kept in the loop at each stage (Eby, 2017). Ultimately, it becomes critical to create a schedule to ensure that everything is completed promptly and that the schedule is managed effectively. When it comes to putting the sales and operations planning process into action, Dalai emphasizes the essence of ensuring that everyone involved knows that success hardly comes quickly. He says that companies should put extra effort, although making mistakes should not elicit a guilt feeling in them. Building a habit of constant improvement is essential.

Value Propositions' Preparation

One way to develop effective plans is to use various tools to help evaluate different operating parameters and configurations. These tools include SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, business model canvas, financial analysis, and break-even analysis. Each of these tools can help to evaluate different aspects of the business to develop an effective plan. For example, the SWOT analysis can help to identify an enterprise's threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths. The PEST analysis can help to evaluate the technological, social, economic, and political factors that may impact a business. The business model canvas can help to map out the business's key components, and the financial analysis can help to assess the business's financial health.

The SWOT Analysis helps to create the basis for creating a disciplined, forward-looking strategy for supply chains (Wang, 2018). It also assists in reinforcing the case for investment possibilities by building a credible value proposition for every opportunity. Companies should investigate means of reducing the available threats and weaknesses. The endeavor to discover solutions could be encompassed in the SWOT as possibilities. In the process, firms often discover synergy, considering that these prospects may be essential to offset multiple vulnerabilities or risks. For example, introducing such technologies as GPS monitoring increases the inbound shipments' in-transit visibility and can concurrently give quick result times to interruptions, inventory management improvements, and improved carrier performance analytics (Muñuzuri et al., 2020). Similarly, a corporation may realize that it has certain possibilities starting to converge or overlap.

For instance, GPS technology integration with a transport management system based on the cloud is necessary, while an AI analytical engine may also come into play (Al-Sakran, 2015). Such an integration simplifies the recognition of ways of combining technologies to deliver invaluable interventions for the enterprise. The establishment of value propositions should be next, and they should clearly define the rewards expected from every prospect. For every investment opportunity, strengthening the value proposition requires convergence and synergies. Next, once there is a vivid view of an opportunity's likely impact, companies could define the value offered in a statement. In a good instance, GPS transmitters could alleviate the issue of freight forwarding by the logistics analysts if they deliver consistent location information for all containers. Synergies may make firms wind up with many features and benefits for similar solutions. Hence, several motivations could exist pursuant to a possibility.

Explaining the core value proposition is simplified when opportunities are linked to strengths and challenges in the chain of supply. Therefore, naturally, it is essential to expand upon the value argument by adding both qualitative and quantitative evidence (GURL, 2017). Over the recent past, companies may have had several situations wherein logistics specialists spent hundreds of hours trying to locate missing shipments, information that might be useful in arguing for the purchase of GPS trackers.

Change Management

There are a number of different tools, tactics, and corporate structures that can help to manage reforms in a tricky global supply chain atmosphere. The most common ones include change management tools, teams, and software to help organizations track, manage, and implement changes to their supply chains. For instance, change management software can be used to track and manage the changes in the supply chain (Tavčar et al., 2018). It can help to create and track change requests, track the progress of the changes, and generate reports on the changes. Manufacturers must find a way of evading disasters, moving faster on new possibilities, and lowering costs to mitigate risk. As a result, perspectives from useful datasets are essential to guiding the choices, which can affect distribution and inventory strategies, communications with customers and partners, and storage options. For manufacturers, it implies implementing a software solution for supply chain planning that gives them the command and visibility required to switch planning their supply chains out of a money pit to a profit center (Tavčar et al., 2018). Producers could unify their distribution network as a whole to prepare for any eventuality, but they have first to integrate strategic choices into a unified platform that is directly connected to the real world via a decision-making feedback mechanism. Hence, it would boost the establishment of vivid KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and monitor progress toward them.

The system needs the addition of sales and operations planning to assist in matching operations with sales and increase the reliability with which demand is predicted. If the system is to be truly useful, it must be strictly connected with minor, less obvious strategic levels like Master Production Schedule, routing, and scheduling (Kumar et al., 2013). In addition, there is a need to control profit-killing factors like excessive waste, reduced productivity, and bad delivery performance and integrate with neighboring business procedures like precise production plans. Then it must be in a position to mitigate the producer's execution plan, including sequencing and batching, as a guarantee for an optimal plan and maintain service levels at the lowest possible cost.

In the end, the system must facilitate precise workforce and logistics planning, which in turn boosts the efficiency of operations, enhances resource utilization, and decreases expenses without sacrificing production or workers' morale (Habib et al., 2020). Everything must be done in accordance with the standards set forth by the company. It is accomplished not by adding on to the current ERP (enterprise resource planning) system but by supplementing it with a solution for supply chain optimization and planning to enable manufacturers' planners to strategize for profits. As opposed to compromising their own business models to fit the software, producers can look for an option that allows goal achievement under their unique conditions. According to Llewellyn (2013), the ostensibly little details frequently become the ones derailing an otherwise well-thought-out plan. Furthermore, not even a single manufacturing blueprint can be implemented if it fails to account for a production limitation. When producers plan their operations carefully utilizing the most effective innovative approaches, they get the command over their production schedules that is essential for meeting delivery deadlines and realizing the corporate objectives.

Lean Supply Chain Basics

Businesses can promote the efficiency of their supply chains in several methods to better respond to and serve customers. Streamlining the supply chain ranks as a better approach, mainly achievable by employing lean production techniques and digitizing the system where necessary. Lean business principles center on open dialogue and the elimination of grey areas that are prone to wastage. Toyota's accomplishment foundations, and thus lean approaches and techniques, were recognized by Kent Bowen and Steven Spear in 1999 (Wincel & Kull, 2013). The first concept articulated by the experts was that every task must have very precise instructions in terms of what has to be done and when. Second, there needs to be a direct line of communication between you and your customers/suppliers, with a simple yes/no system for submitting requests and receiving answers. However, every service and good must have a straightforward and easy-to-understand route to purchase. Finally, any tweaks should be implemented using the empirical procedure with the assistance of trainers at the ground level. Several principles can be met at production facilities without resorting to more sophisticated types of communication. The level of coordination and tangible progress is achievable in a distribution network spanning hundreds of miles thanks to the advanced collection of data and integrated smart communications that promote data accessibility in real-time. Once collected, it is possible to evaluate the data to find ways of cutting down on unnecessary expenditures.

Informing Lean Supply Chain Management through Data Collection

In addition to saving time and effort, automated data collection provides a clearer understanding of client needs and the supply methods used methods to meet the wants. Warehouses can then transition to a pull inventory management model, where supplies get replenished after falling below a given level, allowing for more precise forecasting of forthcoming client demands (Lee et al., 2018). It frees up storage units, which can be put to better use manufacturing products or housing a wider range of SKUs (stock keeping units). Businesses can implement the many aspects of lean inventory control, such as continuous improvement, rapid reaction, event management, and information flow, with the help of automated data acquisition. Warehousing floor workers, who are often overlooked for promotion, could be a great source of efficiency gains. When a cart pusher realizes that a particular stoppage is eating up too much of their time, they can protest to a supervisor about it. As long as the supervisor can easily trace the relevant data, the needless pauses are eliminated. If organizations want to put that insight to good use in enhancing their day-to-day operations, they can make it accessible to employees at every organizational level.

In the distribution network, effort and time are expended for each moment of handling or processing a product. All the occurrences can be recorded by automated means, highlighting any unnecessary expenditures of money and time. There is a potential for labor savings by reassigning one of the superiors who are checking goods twice without intervening in processing to another task (Sampson & Spring, 2012). Sometimes, things happen that result in time and effort being wasted, but it is not always the result of human incompetence. There are those that take place as a result of chance or natural causes. By keeping detailed records, organizations can satisfy orders that were supposed to be filled by a lost shipment with surplus goods from other warehouses. With more information at the company's disposal, it must be in a position to find more strategies to reduce waste in the distribution network. It could include modifying how you handle items or shifting resources around during busy periods. Future enhancements can be made indefinitely.

There are several ways in which operational and supply chain strategies affect other parts of a company. Initially, an organization's supply and operations chain plan can never function independently of the business strategy. It implies that the operations and supply chain strategy should be in line with the business' larger aims and missions. Second, the strategy needs to consider how other departments' actions may affect the distribution network as a whole. For instance, inventory management and demand planning can be profoundly affected by marketing choices. Lastly, the strategy's effectiveness depends on its integration with other departments. Data facilitates the functioning of emerging technology in the supply chain and in the overall business atmosphere, from production to online shopping. In lean inventory control, data is the single most important factor. The key to successfully introducing lean techniques into the contemporary supply chain is to do so by introducing data gathering in a manner that does not interfere with ongoing processes.