"Our most successful clients are not hiding under a rock and maintaining status quo during these inflationary times," points out Lisa Anderson, president of Claremont, CA-based LMA Consulting Group, Inc. and manufacturing expert known for creating supply chain resiliency."
According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer prices are the highest in 40 years. It certainly doesn’t seem to be letting up. In fact, with the Russia-Ukraine war, there will be continued inflationary pressures on products related to oil, gas, commodity, and food at a minimum.
Every client wants to support growth goals while improving service levels (OTIF, on-time-in-full), operational efficiencies and inventory turns. These are timeless objectives for every planner. During the pandemic, the priorities shifted to service levels because clients struggled to keep up with dramatic increases in demand and extreme volatility.
In today’s manufacturing environment, uncertainty has become the norm. Geopolitical disruption, inflation, changing customer expectations, labor shortages, and volatile demand patterns are forcing manufacturers and distributors to make faster and more coordinated decisions than ever before. Companies that continue operating in reactive silos frequently struggle with excess inventory, [...]
We have entered a new era of with inflationary pressures. It started during the pandemic due to limited supply, but it has been spurred on with the rising oil and gas prices, commodity shortages, and rising food prices. Navigating successfully through these inflationary times will make the strong companies [...]
A building products company missed several million dollars in revenue last year because they couldn't meet the demand. Unfortunately, this was a common occurrence. Sales increased dramatically, and they couldn't scale up their manufacturing operations and adapt their purchase requests quickly enough to take advantage of the opportunity.
Sales and operations planning is a dark art, and most organizations typically have a very ad-hoc process of forecasting due to its nature. But it's critical to be directionally correct with your plan. Or you might end up missing opportunities or losing customers. [...]
At least 80% of clients contact us to find out how to predict the unpredictable. This is especially true in custom manufacturing, high growth and promotion-heavy industries; however, it remains accurate across the broad spectrum of manufacturing and distribution companies. Predicting the unpredictable demand plan starts by asking common [...]
2021 was plagued with shortages. As discussed in clients’ demand planning/ forecasting meetings, history is not representative of the future. In one example, the client experienced material shortages and couldn’t sell what customers requested, and so carrying that forecast into the New Year would deliberately carry that issue into 2022.
In working with clients across multiple industries including industrial equipment, food and beverage, building and construction products and healthcare products, there is no doubt that clients using a SIOP (sales, inventory and operations planning) and integrated business planning process are pulling away from the competition.
