Sales and Operations Planning in the Cloud

Video Transcription

Welcome to the Plex Sales & Operations Planning demo. I am going to take on a few roles in the connected sales & operations planning process. Let’s start with the General Manager role. Until Plex S&OP was introduced at Edge Enterprises, we would manage all our planning and data management by Excel which was inefficient and posed a lot of challenges. This made it very difficult to meet our delivery and financial objectives.

Now, with Plex S&OP, even though our planning cycle still starts, as it did before, with this Excel report that we built and download with the latest data right from the system; Excel is no longer our de-facto planning tool but instead a reporting and sharing tool.

What we see here is our monthly performance summary report. Scrolling down, we are able to review our business performance in a format that is specific to our company. Once we review our reports, our monthly planning process returns to Plex S&OP from there. 

Demand Planning starts with our sales manager. So, now wearing the hat of a sales manager, we prepare and evaluate our sales forecast by customer, product category, down to the item.

I am going to take a closer look at Ford because its forecast error last month was higher than our other customers.

To start my review, I am going to drill into the Ford overall demand plan. I really like how the system generates a statistical forecast that I can use as a guide. Though I had a higher error, I do like how the forecast looks at this level so I will drill down further.

I selected one of our top performing items, item 71 Caliper Bracket.

Scrolling down, I am able to view its historical and projected demand in units, average selling price, and the resulting revenue projections. I can also make edits to the quantity, price, and cost values as necessary. I feel really good about my sales plan so now I will let our operations manager know so that the supply plan can be run using my forecast as the input.

Now, as the operations manager of Edge Enterprises, I run the supply plan. I see that the caliper bracket is managed in two locations. At the Atlanta distribution center, I have set the replenishment plan to be once every 4 weeks. 

This, in turn, drives the requirements for the Carlsbad manufacturing plant. Next, I move into the requirement review to better understand the impact of this supply plan against our inventory and capacity.

The requirement review shows that one of our top items, the 30060 Caliper Cover, is marked Urgent, meaning that it is projected to be out of stock during its lead time. Let me drill in to understand the specifics. 

As an operations manager, I see everything in one place. I see the stock out and can easily review different options to address the issue. Next, I want to see how the plan impacts capacity.

Drilling in, I see work center Assembly 1 is way over capacity and will need a significant increase in hours to meet the supply plan, which I can adjust here. Once I am happy with the plan, I approve it and am ready to run our daily requirement plan to drive our production and purchasing activities in Plex.