Sales & Operations Planning

Sales & Operations Planning (or S&OP) links the front end, customer/demand side of a business with the back end or manufacturing/supply side. It is in synchronizing the two faces of the supply chain that many companies slip up- with the resultant inefficiencies often proving to be the difference between the leaders and the laggards.

Applied Optimization's Sales & Operations Planning solutions enables the critical synchronization between supply and demand that is needed for the whole organization to work towards the common organizational goal of maximizing the profit of the overall business. Our approach ensures that the S&OP process reflects the reality of the client’s business model - and does not try to force-fit it to a pre-packaged software product or model. Typical objectives to be optimized include Operating Margin, Plant Production, Delivery Span (lead time), and Supply-Chain Costs. Our customization approach allows you to develop a plan that is fully aligned with your business goals.

We provide a comprehensive Planning tool that streamlines your decision-making process substantially to improve profitability through cost reductions and optimization of operations. The advanced planning functionalities and integrated, benchmarked planning model sets it apart from expensive supply-chain software suites as well as from simplistic spreadsheet-based tools.

An example of a Sales & Operations Planning application is given in this case-study on Applied Optimization's implementation of a planning solution at a leading, global, polymer-manufacturing industry.

Implementing an S&OP solution will enable you to:

• Introduce your organization to a structured S&OP process used by leaders in the process industry.
• Streamline business processes and eliminate deficiencies on the critical path to a successful S&OP process.
• Organize the workflow in your S&OP process to meet business goals.
• Provide your organization with a solid foundation upon which to build sophisticated business processes.
• Reap the benefits of forecasted demand data.
• Evolve towards a financial model-based, and cost-optimized S&OP process.