Expert Insight: Guest Contribution
  By: Karin Bursa, Vice President Marketing, Logility  
     
  September 27 , 2007  
 

Closing the Gap Between Supply and Demand

 
     
 

As Manufacturers and Distributors Become More Demand Driven, Supply Chain Plans Need to be Translated into Achievable Execution Plans

 
     
 
Bursa Says:
"S&OP can be the single most important weapon you have for ensuring that your enterprise is profitably servicing the right customers, through the right channels, with the right products."

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Today’s manufacturing environment continues to grow in complexity. Rapid globalization creates more and more challenges as supply chains are extended, and customers demand greater responsiveness, more frequent deliveries and higher compliance. Gaining better demand visibility and synchronizing your supply chain so that it can quickly and flexibly meet market demand has become critical to maintaining and growing margins, delivering on product innovations and providing great customer service. 

As manufacturers and distributors become more demand driven, supply chain plans need to be translated into achievable execution plans for procurement, production planning and logistics. Although many companies have improved their silos of automation, the real benefits come from bringing supply chain planning and execution closer together. This is what’s driving many of today’s manufacturers to invest in improving their Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) processes. When S&OP is done well, demand matches supply in a profitable operational plan and yields lower inventories, better customer service, higher revenues and improved margins.

Shaw Industries, Inc., a manufacturer of floor coverings, formalized their sales and operation planning processes with Logility Voyager Solutions. With the increased ability to collaborate both internally and externally, Shaw improved forecast accuracy by 19% in the hard surfaces divisions, increased order fill rate by 4% while decreasing hard surface inventory by $20 million, and increased customer service and satisfaction levels.

S&OP can be the single most important weapon you have for ensuring that your enterprise is profitably servicing the right customers, through the right channels, with the right products. Logility Voyager Solutions enable manufacturers and distributors to automate and streamline the S&OP process to help continuously balance dynamic demand, supply, distribution and financial plans to achieve corporate objectives.

With a formalized S&OP process, companies can build more competitive supply chains through increased demand visibility, improved sourcing, synchronized manufacturing, and optimized transportation to more cost-effectively deliver superior customer service.

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