In Business as Usual, traditional methods of predicting market demand rely (or forced to rely) on historical demand in some or other form – trends, patterns, moving averages or short term consumption rates. If not wholly, in substantial measure. Some firms manage to go that extra length to build collaborative platforms for gathering everybody’s piece...
And the rest are at best inconsequential! Talking of planning and scheduling problems in a manufacturing context, the first important thing to get it right is to decide the ‘default’ objective of the plan (or schedule) and then work our way from there (given objectives change and for valid reasons) Is it to reduce backlog...
The (generalized) ‘Birthday coincidence’ problem and the ‘Gamblers ruin problem’ that are in a sense contra-positive to each other, are perhaps the most non-intuitive of basic probability problems. What sounds less likely (Birthday coincidence) is more likely and what sounds more likely (winning a jackpot) is less likely. For those who are not likely to...
Integration: Every Functional Consultant’s Phobia. I just know the ‘module’. ‘They didn’t teach it. Integration is for ‘technical’ guys! I am an SAP functional consultant. I did MBA from a top university. Not bachelor’s in information technology. Yes, it is indeed for ‘technical’ guys, but even latter do not fully understand the pros and cons...
From Contract manufacturing through to 3PL through to Front end customer support operations through to Business Process Outsourcing to now euphemistically called Managed Services. It has been roughly a 25+ years journey of maturity in the Business of Outsourcing ‘non-core’ activities. Beginning with America’s largest corporations. Many once core functions became increasingly non-core over the...
No one ever paid for a Pizza delivery service. It was always free. It is best kept hidden in transaction value. These days every delivery service is a ‘product’. 2 hours, 4 hours, next day, second day, standard delivery for the same stuff are functionally different products. Customers balk when they are expected to pay...
Where does ‘Planning’ Start and End in Your Enterprise? Do you have a ‘Digital’ strategy for transforming your planning functions? Do you have the needed use cases, howsoever vague? What transformation are you really desiring? What ‘Big Data’ are you currently staging and using to better your demand and supply plans? Do you even have...
