Planning by Design
Eight questions to test yourself
How many can you answer with confidence?
01
If you redesigned your planning parameters tomorrow to reflect your actual competitive priorities, how different would they look, and what would that change be worth?
02
If a key customer asks why they were deprioritised in a tight supply situation, can your planning team explain the logic - or was it someone's judgement call?
03
Do you know which customers and products you are optimising for - and which trade-offs you have explicitly accepted? Or is that still an open debate?
04
Your planning parameters — safety stock levels, replenishment frequencies, lead time buffers - were they set based on a defined strategy, or inherited and rarely questioned?
05
When your S&OP process changes e.g. a stocking policy or a service level target - is that reflected in your planning system? Does upstream supply chain receive new signals?
06
You have invested in planning technology. But how much of what it recommends do your planners follow, and do you know what that override rate is costing you?
07
Can you quantify the margin impact of the inventory you are carrying for the wrong products, and for the service failures on the right ones?
08
Your planning system can make decisions autonomously. But these are only as good as the logic they are built on. Is there a clear logic to reflect in the system?
Talk to a supply chain expert!
The questions you could not answer are the ones worth talking about. Our experts work with supply chain leaders every week on exactly these challenges. Reach out and let us start with where it hurts most.
