In this modern era of globalisation where geographical boundaries are no longer a limitation, with shrinking lead times and increasing speed of business, organisations have a greater need for efficient supply chains than ever before.

In this blog I will explore the collaboration features allowing organisations to plan their supply chains effectively and efficiently.

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In today’s fast moving world, there is an ever increasing demand for customisation and personalisation, whether it be initials stitched on to your running shoes or a bespoke paint colour for your car. Everyone likes to have a personal touch in their day to day activities, so why should SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) be any different?

If you haven’t seen the SAP IBP Excel Add-In, or want to know more about the various functionalities offered, please take a read of this blog from Steve Rampton “SAP IBP Excel Views – A Planners dream?”. I will split this blog as to how Planners can create their own personalised views within SAP IBP in two;

• Basic formatting of the Excel Add-In
• The advanced Olivehorse way!

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In today’s fast moving world of growing customer expectations, shrinking lead times, reduced profit margins and inventories, Demand Planners have a big responsibility to act as the first gatekeeper to be able to foresee changes in Demand Signals and accurately make predictions for future. The margin for error is continuously decreasing, as any errors cause a major rippling effect on downstream processes. For example, a change of forecast bias by 5% may induce the following risks;

• Reduced customer service levels
• Increased lead times
• Improper mix of inventory levels leading to possibility of stock outs or over stocked DCs
• Added costs due to firefighting production builds and expediting fulfilment (air freight)

To cope up with this fast-paced supply chains, new metric must be adopted by demand planners all over the world. One of those is Forecast Value Add. I am going to take you through details of Forecast Value add and explain how we can use this to improve the forecasting process. I would also be explaining examples using SAP Integrated Business Planning.

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In this blog I will walk through the principles of ‘Attribute Transformations’ within SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and discuss the basics of implementing such transformations.

We will also look at how some demand planning scenarios like displaying Year -1 data, Realignment (which is not currently offered as standard within SAP IBP), Distribution Centre closures and Product Substitutions can be achieved using Attribute Transformations.

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