Planning Redesign for an Industrial Controls Company with Global Operations

Project Summary: 

• The goal was to improve the quality of the demand plans through Sales and Planning engagement and Statistical models 

• The project revolved around three building blocks;  

Process diagnostics and recommendations to understand the lay of the land

Exception planning to focus on the key 20% of the products which make up 80% of the revenue 

Enable the many functionalities of SAP APO to improve planner productivity   

A broad overview of problems: 

• Only one statistical model used for 10,000+ SKU’s.  
• A generic model was run at the lowest level in weekly buckets producing the ubiquitous straight line. 
• Demand Planning was getting Sales inputs in monthly buckets while the Planning platform allowed only weekly buckets 
• Planners went through an elaborate excel process to reallocate and develop weekly plans. 
• The process was severely handicapped by system limitations 

Developed a Distribution plan to deliver   

• The Netted plan for deployment 
• Feed the Transaction system where the Scheduling was done. 
• Identify demand-supply imbalances
• Issue alerts for the planners to address