Aamer Rehman, vice president, manufacturing solutions here at Kinaxis, serves as the conference chairperson for Day 1 of the event, on January 26. As the chairperson, he will introduce each speaker, lead the Q&A after each session, and share his personal experiences and key highlights of the topics discussed. Aamer will also present the session “Continuous Sales & Operations Planning for the Manufacturing Sector” on Friday, January 27, at 11:30 am.

Here is the session abstract:

Planning has long been segmented into different isolated activities that reflect organizational structures and functional goals, leading to long, ineffective, and inefficient planning cycles. For maximized value, sales and operations planning (S&OP) must be a truly cross-functional activity that can directly and simultaneously address both individual departmental goals and joint corporate objectives. In this session, you will learn about the specific technology and process requirements to achieve a continuous and collaborative S&OP capability as it applies to the manufacturing industry in particular.

A recording of this session and slide deck will be made available shortly after the event. Stay tuned!

If you’re at the show, stop by booth #7 and say hi to the Kinaxis team! Also, make sure to follow the hashtag #SOPLVS on Twitter to get real-time updates from the event.

For more information on the Sales & Operations Planning Innovation Summit, visit: http://operations.theiegroup.com/sop-lasvegas

Here’s the webcast abstract:

To rise above the competition today, companies need to better understand the impact their planning and decision-making patterns have on their organization, and the extended supply chain. To transform their organizations, executives have to revisit the underlying processes and the supporting technology that enable the business transformation. However, the often forgotten element in the equation is the human capital of the organization. People and relationships are the core of this transformation change. This webinar will address how achieving break-through results requires companies to fully embrace and execute cross-functional and cross-organization collaboration.

Integrated Reconciliation (IR), created by Andy Coldrick and Dick Ling in the 1990’s, is at the heart of successful S&OP. The best IR processes are those where participants have business acumen and behave cross-functionally.

Identify the maestros in your business and liberate them!

Presenters:
Andy Coldrick, President, Ling-Coldrick
Kirk Munroe, VP of Product, Kinaxis,

Download the webcast here: http://www.kinaxis.com/campaign/on-demand-orchestrating-success-in-SOP/

The pessimist said worse. This answer feels like a self fulfilling prophecy. Let’s eat more and move less since it doesn’t matter anyway, at least our prediction will be right.

The optimist said better. One more binge of turkey and eggnog and then we’ll eat less, move more, and with a hope and a prayer the world will be a better place. From a supply chain perspective the optimist may have some incremental improvement strategies in place, especially after the disruptions of 2011, but deep down there is still an element of hope and prayer with the optimistic view (with all due respect to hope and prayer, they are good things!).

Taking a supply chain view, let’s look at the realist’s answer. The realist will agree with the optimist but with a few additional actions to ensure their prediction will come true. First, the realist will study the events of 2011. In a blog post from November 2011, “Trends I am Watching”, Lora Cecere calls out significant trends of 2011. For example, Lora highlighted the supply chain disruptions of 2011, the biggest of these being the results of natural disasters. There are two takeaways for supply chain leaders: The first is redesigning the supply chain to be “resilient” to change. According to Lora this requires the ability to sense change, have control tower analytics, and “what-if” analysis to understand and respond to change. The second takeaway it to think about where else the disruptions will come from. The supply chain has never been more politically, environmentally, and obviously economically intertwined. As an example, Occupy Wall Street protesters were planning to block ports along the West coast. For Swiss watch manufacturers, many of their components are supplied by Swatch, “a competitive supplier.” When Swatch was looking at a strategy to stop providing their components to ensure they could supply their own product in growing markets such as China, the other manufacturers where looking for help in a nationally regulated industry where mechanical parts must be manufactured in Switzerland in order for their watches to claim “Swiss movement.” One thing is for sure, there will be supply chain disruptions, but the causes may be different. The realist will reflect back on 2011, including the ones Lora highlights to understand how best to prepare for 2012. There is a great SupplyChainBrain Interview with Joe McBeth, vice president of supply chain for Jabil, from our Kinexions conference that speaks to this issue (free registration to view, but well worth it!)

Lora also highlights significant trends to watch for in 2012 in the same blog post. The other action the realist will take is to reach out to gather this type of information from the folks who watch supply chains for a living. It will help take the guess work out of preparing for 2012 and beyond. For example, Lora talks about “big data supply chains.”  New data sources and types of data are exploding, global partners are expanding and new product introductions come and go faster than our New Year’s resolutions. Supply Chain leaders need to stay on top of the curve when it comes to managing the “big data supply chain.”  As with the trends of 2011, the 2012 supply chain predictions will drive strategies to ensure 2012 is better than 2011. Lora’s other predictions for 2012 are well worth checking out.

So will 2012 be better or worse than 2011? I would be interested to hear your thoughts and any other resolutions! In the meantime let’s all eat less, move more, reflect on the past and keep our eyes and ears open to make 2012 an exciting time for supply chain. And for all you optimists out there, we’ll throw hope and prayer into the mix too! Happy New Year.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the plant

Not a creature was stirring, not even an ant.

The shipments were stacked by the loading dock with care,

In hopes that FedEx soon would be there;

The supply chain planners were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of on-time shipments danced in their heads;

With my dog on her cushion and a blanket on my lap,

I’d just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

When there on my nightstand there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the Blackberry I flew like a flash,

As if I was running the 100 yard dash.

The soft blue light from the screen made a glow

Giving the lustre of mid-day to my face below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sentence, with emoticons so dear,

With a short little message, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment that I wouldn’t get sick.

More rapid than hand-writing the words they came,

And they jumped off the screen listing name after name;

“To Boston, to NY, to San Jose too!

To London, to Shanghai, to Kalamazoo!

To the top of the market! To the top of the mall!

They shipped away! Shipped away! Shipped away all!”

As two sheets that before the wind flies,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the skies,

Up to 35,000 feet the planes they flew,

With a cargo of products, and  commercial packing slips too.

And then of a sudden I heard on the roof

The strange sounds of what I thought was a goof.

As I turned off the Blackberry and was turning around,

Down the chimney the supply chain manager came with a bound.

He was in business casual, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were not tarnished with a speck of soot;

A bundle of metrics he held in his hands

Developed from information gathered from faraway lands.

The end of a laser pen he held tight in his teeth,

And the light it encircled his charts like a wreath;

He had inventory, on-time shipments, and cost savings to go;

With targets for all, so the executives would know.

He was happy and sane, a right savvy spry elf;

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A grand sweep of the arm and a nod of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

All the metrics were green, no duty was shirked.

And laying his charts near his portfolio to close,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to the Express Line, to his team gave a whistle,

Into the frequent flier  world he flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy planning to all, and to all a good-night.”

Balancing supply and demand of anything is everything.

We have been using that phrase for some time now and it resonates more with me everything I see it and think about it.

It doesn’t even just apply in business, but in life in general. Monthly finances.  Deciding on vacations.  Decisions on career path.  Many even apply this to personal relationships – “they have had us over for dinner the last two times, we are overdue to have them.”

In business it is even more obvious.  It is true across all business functions and across all industries.

IT has to balance budget and resources (supply) against the top priority business needs (demand). HR has to balance hiring of the right people at the right time (supply) against the goals of the business to support customers (demand).  Finance has to balance the needs of the growth of the business (demand) against the revenue and investment income (supply) the company generates.  Product and R&D organizations have to balance customer and market requirements (demand) against the resources available to them (supply).  Most of the other areas of the business should be even more apparent.

It is also true of industries.  Whether companies are in high tech, consumer products, retail, life sciences, automotive, industrial, oil and gas, or agriculture – it remains the same – balancing supply and demand is everything.  It is also true when you think about balancing people and their skills.  It is true of consulting and construction.  It is true for every industry.

Another strong belief we have at Kinaxis is … business is complex, your IT systems must not be.

With these in mind, I want to ask all business leaders one straightforward question …

What if you revisited all your software, IT and consulting spending and rethought it in the context of … how would my business look if I had a single demand/supply balancing engine and process that went cross all functions and allowed me plan, monitor and respond to deviations from plan in near-real time?

Think about it.

’til next time … Kirk

First, what are the symptoms of DPSS?

The most obvious symptom is a planning system for every planning function: a supply planning tool, a demand planning tool, a salary planning tool, a headcount planning tool, financial planning and budgeting tool, etc… You get the point. Folks, it is planning! These discreet planning processes need to be pulled together. They all impact each other in significant ways.

The other symptom, which may be even more serious, is that planning eventually needs to disintegrate into work. The best laid plans are out-of-date before … well … often before the planner hits “submit.” Disparate planning systems are disconnected from response management systems. When my business fluctuates from plan – and it will on a very frequent basis – I need to be able to able to model “what-if” scenarios in real-time to see the impact of my decisions before I make them.

Demand and supply are in constant flux, and I am not talking about just supply and demand of parts and products. Supply and demand goes to cash, people, contractors, project resources, etc… these all change as a result of the economy, natural disasters, and more. Business is complex. Your planning, monitoring and response system cannot be.

So, today we introduce the cure for DPSS. It is called RapidResponse Control Tower. It is a single product that is the answer to many business challenges. Most software companies don’t talk about “product.” That is a result of them having WAY too many of them. They talk solutions, systems, and platforms to hide this fact. Look at any of IBM Software Group, SAP, or Oracle – they have multiple planning products in multiple brands! We are proud that we have one product but it is also a solution and a system and a platform. One set of analytics, one instance of the data, and one place to go for “what-if” scenarios to better manage your business.

RapidResponse Control Tower links several business processes to a company’s supply chain operations so teams can manage the cross-functional consequences of decisions with unprecedented speed and confidence. RapidResponse enables enterprises to do deep, forward-looking analysis and collaboratively study “what-if” planning and response scenarios across impacted areas including:

• Supply Chain Planning (material & capacity)
• Demand Planning/Demand Management
• S&OP
• Supplier/Customer Collaboration
• Project Management (new!)
• Workforce Optimization (new!)
• Profitability Management (new!)
• Sales Force Optimization (new!)

Is it now obvious why I am so excited to be here at Kinaxis!?

til later today and Kinexions Day 2 wrap … Kirk

Another great week – we’re working on some really exciting stuff! Don’t forget to check out my blog regularly to follow me during my first 90 days at Kinaxis. Here’s a post from Day 9:

Had a great conversation today with Duncan Klett, one of our founders and our current VP of Analytics.

Duncan shared the story about working at Mitel in the mid-1980′s and how the MRP system they used took 40 hours or so to run one cycle.  The MRP would run the cycle over the weekend and they were only running off a weekly snapshot because of the time it took to do the necessary calculations.  Imagine the challenges if someone entered bad/incorrect data late on a Friday.  On Monday, the company would be faced with the decision of running with a view into the business that was almost two weeks old (the one run the previous weekend) or decide to shut down production for two days and wait for the MRP to run.

Duncan, along with a small team, developed a solution to address the need to be more nimble in the manufacturing and supply chain process.  As hardware and software were much more closely coupled in those days, the solution was a piece of hardware that allowed the processing to occur 1000 times faster than the MRP system.  You can imagine the breakthroughs in how nimble the supply chain management became between MRP runs!

Fast forward through over 25 years of technology development, the decoupling of software from hardware, the certification on IA64 almost ten years ago, through today’s software which scales to over 1 TB – in memory!  Combine this with the experience of helping hundreds of companies become more responsive in both the supply and demand sides of their supply chain, working both inside and outside the walls of their own enterprises, combining data and process from not only different sites, but different corporations and you have a solution in RapidResponse that is very unique.  These technology and business process advances, learning from both successes and stumbles, are a big part of what makes our secret sauce so special.

It is easy to forget or disregard the past in the high tech, fast paced world in which we live, but the past is often the biggest factor in predicting the future.  Looking at our past, I am confidently predicting a very successful future, one that other companies are not going to be able to duplicate.

Trevor will be presenting the session, “Integrated Business Planning–Fact or Fiction?” on Thursday, September 15.

Here’s the session abstract:
No matter which S&OP model we adopt–Gartner, Oliver Wight, Wallace & Stahl–they all stress the collaborative nature of working across different functions and different levels of granularity, and are therefore integrated. Others focus on business planning, emphasizing the need to have Finance involved in S&OP and to have executive participation and sign-off. All of the process consultants emphasize that S&OP adoption is a matter of maturity, and Gartner has pointed out that very few companies have evolved beyond Stage 2 (Anticipating) in its four-stage maturity model of Reacting, Anticipating, Collaborating, and Orchestrating. So what is the barrier? It isn’t technology, but trust.

Follow Trevor on Twitter at @Milesahead or on the 21st Century Supply Chain Blog to get updates from the event.

For more information on the Sales & Operations Planning Summit, visit: http://www.theiegroup.com/SOP_Boston/Overview.html

Unicharm is the largest manufacturer and distributor of diapers and other consumer sanitary products in Asia. They implemented RapidResponse (replacing existing supply chain planning solutions) so they could move away from the limitations of statistical-based planning systems. With RapidResponse, Unicharm can complete planning calculations in five minutes—a process that previously took 12 hours.

In a news release distributed today, Unicharm said:

“We chose RapidResponse for its unparalleled ability to allow us to effectively manage our supply chain in today’s environment given the urgent and explicit need for supply chain visibility, simulation, and collaboration capabilities.”

It’s so humbling hearing it directly from the customer! Check out what other customers are saying about us in the Executive Perspectives section on Kinaxis TV.

This Case Study provides insights on how Amgen transformed its supply planning processes and enabled rapid planning capabilities, with advanced planning capabilities and systems.

Key findings of the report include:

• Rapid demand and supply planning processes are foundational capabilities required for a multitier sales and operations planning (S&OP) process that can propel companies beyond simple supply and demand matching to conscious, value-driven business decisions.
• Life science manufacturers don’t often incorporate into their planning processes “what-if” scenario analysis to optimize supply. Additionally, many companies have disconnected their short-term planning from long-term capacity and supply commitment processes.
• By centralizing elements of its planning process and deploying the appropriate advanced planning tool, Amgen can now quickly model the impacts of various “what-if” scenarios and extend these analyses to multiple planning levels across the entire supply network.
• The company is now able to rapidly develop more-accurate supply plans that optimize capacity, inventory and product shelf life, decreasing the total planning cycle from 21 to 12 days. These consolidated, synchronized views of demand and supply across the entire product supply network are generated by the tool in minutes.

Download the newsletter here: http://www.kinaxis.com/campaign/kinaxis-gartner-pharma-newsletter/