Supply Chain Demand and Supply Planning
Rising customer demands for greater agility and responsiveness have many manufacturers moving their supply chains from a traditional "push" model to a "pull" model—one that is driven by customer demand rather than by supply. These demand-driven supply networks (DDSNs) link all supply chain activities to customer demand. Manufacturing companies that follow DDSN models consistently lead their industries in financial performance.
Supply Chain Demand and Supply Planning solutions from Microsoft and its partners help manufacturers succeed with a DDSN model by empowering their people to more accurately manage demand, balance demand with available supply, and establish and synchronize plans with supply chain partners.
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Business challenge
Operating a DDSN presents challenges to people at manufacturing companies who need to gauge customer demand and respond to changes in demand, even when they take place at a moment's notice. Manufacturers' responsiveness and agility in the areas of sales and operations planning (S&OP) and demand management—the two major parts of supply chain planning—are still hampered by cumbersome, static processes. Common problems include:
| • | Lack of real-time, robust, and actionable data. |
| • | Lack of integration among financial, operating, sales, and marketing plans. |
| • | Inability of people to share information and documents. |
| • | Poor analytical capabilities and collaborative planning environments. |
| • | Lack of alert and monitoring capabilities. |
Solutions
Supply Chain Demand and Supply Planning solutions from Microsoft and its partner ecosystem help manufacturers change the way they manage their supply chains to become more demand-driven, adaptive, and responsive. By improving people's visibility into customer demand and supplier capabilities, these solutions create an environment that enables real-time decisions about manufacturing activity, which can lower inventory while improving customer service.
Demand management solutions offer real-time demand management business processes, delivered with an integrated business intelligence and collaboration framework, to empower people with collaboration and analytic capabilities. For example, Microsoft SQL Server can be used for analytics reporting and root cause analysis workflows. Microsoft Office Excel supports primary forecasting workflows at all levels, including forecast entry, change, and analysis. Microsoft Office Outlook offers smooth integration for e-mail alerts and tasks, and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server can be used to quickly resolve issues and compress planning cycle times.
Sales and operations planning (S&OP) solutions, which include connected systems, process workflows, event management, and live communication, offer collaboration, analysis, integration, workflow, and monitoring functionality throughout all phases of a manufacturer's S&OP workflow—beginning with the baseline forecast created by people in the manufacturer's sales and marketing departments, all the way through the forecast for a specific customer, the creation of a consensus forecast, supply planning, resolution and exception processes, approval and budgeting, sales allocations, order promising, and communication with the manufacturer's production facilities.
Case studies
Read these case studies to learn how Microsoft and partner solutions have helped manufacturing companies.
Business benefits
Core Microsoft collaboration, integration, and analytic capabilities support supply chain planning for manufacturers' demand-driven supply chains. Demand-driven companies that have switched from a "push" method of moving product, which was often based on incomplete or inaccurate data, to a "pull" method that empowers people to respond quickly to real-time demand signals, have found that this move is key to sustainable, profitable growth. Specific benefits include:
| • | Improve S&OP performance.
The Microsoft integration, collaboration, and business intelligence framework allows manufacturers to improve S&OP performance with real-time, collaborative processes that enable people to respond and adjust to plan deviations. |
| • | Make real-time decisions on manufacturing activity.
Improved visibility into both customer demand and upstream supplier capabilities enables people to make better-informed, real-time decisions on manufacturing activity, facilitating lower inventories, while improving customer service. |
| • | Create demand plans with easy-to-use tools.
People at manufacturing firms and their trading partners can create demand plans with familiar Microsoft Office tools, such as Excel. |
| • | Respond faster to changes.
People can respond more rapidly to the inevitable changes in a demand plan, simulate "what-if" scenarios to test possible responses, and re-plan for optimum performance based on new conditions. |
| • | Incorporate consumer feedback.
Manufacturers' employees can see immediate feedback from the consumer, which helps them better predict demand. |
| • | Reduce planning cycle times.
Microsoft portals can connect key stakeholders to make planning more consensus-based and efficient. |
Overview
Technology
