Sales & Operational Planning (S&OP)

S&OP is at the heart of balancing supply and demand and is essential for aligning the company around a common financial, demand and supply chain.  Using structured S&OP can enable organisations to develop a  cross-functional collaborative approach to forecasting, make better decisions  on production sourcing and inventory by taking service and lead-time trade-offs into account, and recast the warehousing of products with better data.
 
Delegates will learn how to secure senior management commitment to the S&OP process. They will also gain a better understanding of how to manage the relationships between sales and marketing stakeholders on the demand side and the manufacturing and other operational stakeholders on the supply side. 

The course has been designed for managers,  supervisors and other staff in functions such as Sales, marketing, operations, production management, transportation & finance, as well as those involved in coordinating new product launches.

The insight and perspective provided by this course will be an eye opener for sales staff who might not otherwise take forecasting seriously.

At the end of the course, participants will be able to

• take a different perspective on traditional data such as sales history and forecasts, as well as time-phased inventory projections and production capacity.
• understand how their forecasts impact manufacturing schedules and inventory levels. 
• have developed the skills to enable them to see whether they are producing enough product to meet sales demand.
• recognise how production is tied to finance, and enable managers to see the financial impact of production decisions so appropriate adjustments may be then undertaken. 

Topics covered in this course include:

• Definition of S&OP and its implications
• The S&OP processes and their purpose
• The role of S&OP and its fit with MRP II?
• The integration of S&OP into a business
• The stages of the S&OP process and their implementation
• Introducing S&OP and the information needed for the process
• The determination of the likely outputs to the process
• Implementation of the processes

Open and in-company courses available in the UK or in your country