High-tech discrete manufacturers are feeling a very real and uncomfortable truth; the world has changed and the majority of supply chains simply have not innovated quickly enough to succeed effectively.

Cloud based Advanced Planning technologies such as SAP IBP require data integration both into and out of ERP platforms, BI Systems and other 3^rd party systems. 

Data integration covers both Master Data and Transactional Data. Certain data sets such as BOM’s and Routings have more challenges due to the complexity of the underlying data.

Introduction

Moving holidays like Ramadan, Easter & Chinese New Year can cause planners an increase in manual effort to get the demand right, in the right place, at the right time.

Traditional seasonal forecasting models handle the seasonal patterns for fixed holiday periods like Christmas & New Year, however no out-of-box forecasting models are available in any demand planning system for moving holidays.

This blog intends to deep dive into the functionality within SAP IBP for Demand module to determine what system features are available to handling this challenge.

(6 minute read)

Extract, Load and Transform to get a Single Version of the Truth

Today, most companies find themselves swamped by data and they often struggle to find a comprehensive, solid and reliable set of data that they can trust, and they can use for data-driven decision making.

In many organisations, it is very common to use the statistical forecast as a baseline forecast.  Understanding and analysing of historical data are very important to generate a reliable statistical forecast. In most of the cases, demand planners rely on their team’s experience and conduct visual check (graphs) to understand historical sales pattern such as seasonality, trend, etc. SAP adds another feature in its SAP IBP software under Forecast Automation application, and through this application, demand planners can analyse historical demand data statistically without being too mathematical. In this blog, I will walk you through how it works and discuss some of its advantages and drawbacks of it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

This article explains the importance of Inventory management in achieving a high customer service level with the right inventory.

There is only one way to go: Forward.

The world is constantly changing, things that we could barely imagine a few years ago have now become part of our daily routines.  We take for granted how we use our smartphones, the cloud, and electric cars and many other technological breakthroughs.   For example, 10 years ago it would have been hard to believe for some sceptics, that a smartphone could provide enough computing power to run their spreadsheets or provide a wireless connection fast enough to watch video streaming.

Current State of affairs

Digital transformation seems to be a buzzword at the moment in business. Everybody is talking about Digital transformation and planning for the big change that Industry 4.0 is bringing. Yet, very few seem to be actively transforming their business to be able to take advantage of the opportunities it brings.

I have the dubious privilege of having been working prior to the invention of both the personal computer (PC) and applications such as spreadsheets and word processors. Since their arrival, there has been an explosion in the use of spreadsheets to plan all areas of businesses large and small. While this has delivered significant value it doesn’t come without some disadvantages. This blog describes these drawbacks and discusses one alternative planning platform, Anaplan, which can retain many of the advantages of spreadsheets while avoiding the negative aspects.

Master data is an important pre-requisite for achieving good planning results. Like any other system, a successful SAP Advanced Planning & Optimisation (APO) implementation relies on having good quality master data. When projects go-live we always get good results but over a period of time, the quality of results tend to deteriorate due to poor master data hygiene. This is especially true when the SKU churn is significant and the supply chain networks are large.

In this blog, I will outline the features of the Master Data Check Tool developed by Olivehorse.