It was approximately 12 years ago when the company I was working for made the difficult decision to outsource the board manufacturing shop.  After a very trying six month transition, the management team was questioning the wisdom of the move.   Deliveries from the subcontractor were consistently late and quality problems were worse than at any time in recent memory.  Much of these problems were not the direct responsibility of the subcontractor as we were quickly learning how much of the hidden factory had failed to transfer (which was not reflected in the process documentation).     We were at serious risk of missing key revenue goals for the year and our customers were rapidly losing confidence in our delivery capabilities.    

I was asked by the site leader to assess exactly how much of our missed revenue was the direct consequence of the outsourcing predicament and what would our year-end performance look like if the situation didn’t improve.  Under normal circumstances, these questions would have been extremely difficult to answer given that the CCA’s were only a subset of the materials required for assembly and the low volume, high mix of our sales activity made general assumptions impractical.   Fortunately, we had recently invested in a response management tool that provided us with some very easy to use simulation capabilities.   In a matter of hours, I was able to not only identify all of the revenue that was impacted by late supplies from the subcontractor, but also create a range of scenarios with different assumptions concerning future performance.     These simulations helped us to rationalize priorities and additional investments in risk mitigation that proved to be instrumental in minimizing the impact to revenue and customer satisfaction.

While this experience made it easy to further promote the value of the simulation tool, many of my peers in supply chain management were significantly less enthusiastic.   They argued that our aerospace business was not very volatile and that we had been profitable and successful at managing the business without any simulation tools for years.  

Much has changed in the business climate since those days, with much greater demand volatility driven by both the global market place and the speed of new product introductions.   The combination is the perfect storm for creating sales and operations plans that are quickly at odds with reality.   Never has the need for simulation capabilities been greater and yet I’m still surprised by the number of companies who have not made investments in this area.   

In a survey by the Demand Management Solutions Group (DMSG) almost half of the 130 respondents said that less than 25% of the decisions related to demand exceptions were supported by technology solutions.    Other supply chain surveys have consistently highlighted simulation capabilities as one the key business technology gaps needed to improve S&OP performance.    In my experience, companies that are testing the various demand scenarios (and their supply chain risks and capabilities to support those scenarios) are more prepared to react when change does occur. 

So when faced with questions about your organizations readiness to address possible variations in the demand or supply picture, if you haven’t yet invested in a simulation tool, you probably can’t fully appreciate  the performance improvements (or risk mitigation) that they can provide.

TrackBack • Digg This • Add to del.icio.us
Tags: Demand management, Operations performance, Performance management, Sales & operations planning (S&OP), Scenario management, Supply chain risk
Posted in Demand management, Sales & operations planning (S&OP), Supply chain risk management
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.