SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING
What is Supply Chain Planning?
Supply chain planning is the process of forecasting demand, managing resources, and coordinating operations to ensure that products are produced and delivered to customers efficiently and cost-effectively.
As customer demands have grown and supply chains have become more challenging to manage, the importance of supply chain planning has never been greater. Accurate forecasting, robust planning processes, and complete visibility across the entire supply chain are essential for effective management. At Establish, our Supply Chain Planning Consultants have the expertise and software tools necessary to help you develop and implement these critical processes. Below, you can find an overview of the key areas that our Supply Chain Planning Consultants can help companies improve.
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)
A robust Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process creates alignment across different departments and operations to ensure that all parts of the organization are working towards the same objectives. This alignment enhances forecasting, inventory management, customer service, and profitability. At Establish, our Supply Chain Consultants can help you develop these processes and provide the tools needed to make them efficient and sustainable. Our solutions are designed to align and synchronize all business functions, ensuring full visibility of the supply chain in action.
Inventory Planning & Optimization
Inventory management is a vital part of an efficient supply chain. Too much inventory consumes capital and strains warehouse capacity, while not enough will negatively impact your customer service. Establish’s Supply Chain Planning Consultants combine supply chain expertise with the use of inventory optimization tools to optimize the inventory management processes and stocking strategy and ensure you have the right inventory levels to improve customer service while minimizing supply chain costs.
Demand Planning and Forecasting
Demand planning and forecasting are critical for businesses to make informed decisions and ensure they have the right inventory and labor to meet demand without incurring excess costs. Establish’s Supply Chain Consultants use AI-driven forecasting tools to generate highly accurate demand forecasts based on historical data, market trends, and other relevant factors. This approach increases forecast accuracy, enhances efficiency by automating manual processes, and improves planning across merchandising, supply chain, and operations.
Distribution Planning
A critical component to your overall supply chain plan is deciding how products will be transported and delivered to customers. Maximizing customer service levels and profit requires a distribution plan optimized within the context of your overall supply chain. At Establish, our Supply Chain Consultants leverage our extensive supply chain strategy experience and powerful optimization tools to determine and implement the optimal distribution strategy for your business.
Purchase Planning
Not only is it important to plan how products will get to the end customer optimally, but it is imperative that there is a process in place when it comes to purchasing. Having a robust procurement process that incorporates all relevant data and aligns with the demand plan, production plan, and inventory management plan is crucial. Without it, the entire supply chain can suffer. Insufficient orders or vendor delays can lead to stockouts and unfulfilled customer orders, while over-purchasing can result in high costs and warehouse capacity issues.
At Establish, our Supply Chain Planning Consultants utilize powerful tools to integrate key inputs such as target inventory levels, demand forecasts, minimum order quantities (MOQs), and lead times. This creates an automated process that determines optimal purchase timing and quantities, allowing your purchasers to focus on value-adding activities.
Production Planning & Scheduling
For companies that manufacture and produce their own products, production planning and scheduling are essential to ensuring the organization meets both current and future demand requirements. A production plan should instill absolute confidence that you can meet both present and future demand at the lowest possible cost to your business. Our Supply Chain Planning Consultants create solutions that offer production planning that determines what, where, when, and how much you need to produce, based on all your business rules and constraints, ensuring a feasible plan that maximizes profit.