PLANNING

Sales Forecasting, Production Planning & Scheduling, Sales & Operations Planning, Inventory Planning, Procurement, Capacity Planning..... the list of planning tools is endless.

Planning is key to a business’s success, yet the choice of what to plan and how to plan it is fundamental, some examples of these areas follow.

Supply Chain Planning

Companies face many challenges in their supply chain, particularly increasing variability, both at the source and delivery side. Moreover, complexity is increasing because of shorter product life cycles in a global network context. Extra inventory and excess capacity are “quick fix” solutions but are at the same time driving the high “cash to serve”. Because of rising demands combined with price pressure, a major challenge for any organisation is the “cost to serve”.

The solution will be found by looking at the supply chain from a wider business perspective.

Axios has the expertise, the tools and the experience to determine your supply chain strategy in line with your business strategy and performance objectives. We will work together to determine clear strategic supply chain objectives and best practices. This will include:

• Network Design – to propose and implement a network optimisation that allows you to deliver more cost efficiency while meeting the delivery service objectives
• Supply Chain Planning Strategy and Policy Methodology - to balance net asset requirements and cost efficiency with service objectives
• Cost to Serve Approach – to reveal the true cost of service and complexity. It will be your first eye opener toward profitability optimisation
• Product Portfolio Management and Customer Segmentation - to keep control of the cost and cash to serve while meeting your market ambitions
  

Integrated and performing supply chain processes are your roadmap to sustain your supply chain strategy in the longer term. Our supply chain process and support will guide you in this transformation process.

Sales and Operations Planning

Missed deliveries, dissatisfied customers, excess inventory, pressures on margins – these are just some of the challenges facing businesses today. Often this is due to demand and supply being out of balance. Therefore, how can organisations ensure their demand and supply are in balance and keep them there?

Sales and Operations Planning provides an early warning process to alert people that they’re getting out of synchronisation. This allows adjustments to be made to the production and inventory plans well in advance.

Fundamentally, Sales and Operations Planning is a decision making process that:

• Balances demand and supply
• Aligns volume and mix
• Integrates financial and operating plans

Volume refers to product families and aggregate resources; mix of SKUs and individual customer orders. If volume – rates of sales and production – is planned effectively, it’s much less difficult to deal with mix problems as they inevitably arise. On the other hand, if volume is not planned well, then mix issues become substantially more difficult to cope with. Smart companies plan their volumes first, and spend enough time and effort doing it well.

The major benefits of Sales & Operations Planning include:

• More timely and informed decision making, leading to reduced emergency and contingency costs on capital projects;
• Provision of capacity in line with business plans. This generally leads to a more stable master schedule which delivers higher customer service, lower inventory and better productivity;
• Risk reduction, especially where the supply of strategically important materials is limited;
• Simpler and more accurate budgeting, since the S&OP process provides a dynamic link between the business plan and the operational plan, allowing both to be kept in step with each other. The budget information then simply drops out of the S&OP.

GREATER SAVINGS, SERVICE AND REACTIVITY

Axios have many years experience in implementing sustainable planning processes providing an invaluable “window into the future” for many blue chip clients.