challenge

Due to rapidly changing market conditions and the need to supply major supermarkets with brandedand private label product, our client wanted to refresh and update their existing S&OP process. Keyoutcomes of a revised process was reduced inventories, improved customer service and planningdisciplines.

● The business had undergone several structural and cultural changes through mergers and acquisitionsfrom a co-operative structure to that of being a division of a global food and beverage company

● An appreciating Australian dollar meant that markets that could traditionally be used to sell excessstock were no longer available

● Despite using an ERP system for planning, much processing was performed outside the system usingspread sheets and other manual processes. There was no confidence in decision making, siloedapproaches to planning with second guessing of activities

FAST MOVING FOOD PRODUCER

CASE STUDY

background

www.gra.net.au

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) Design 3

● The initial brief was to undertake a review of the existing planning processes as well as underlyingsupporting tools in order to understand current strengths and weaknesses to enable a improvement planto be built. Key activities undertaken were:

● A review of demand and supply planning processes● Interviews with key Management and Operational personnel● A review of the extant S&OP process including inputs, outputs, decision rights and meeting outcomes● A review of systems and data supporting the planning process● A review of key roles and responsibilities● Workshops with key personnel to test initial findings and cooperatively develop an improvement roadmap

that was owned by the business

Head office110 Jolimont Road

East Melbourne VIC 3002Tel: (03) 9421 4611

Email: info@gra.net.auwww.gra.net.au

Melbourne | Sydney | Canberra | Brisbane

CASE STUDY

approach

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outcome

● An S&OP Maturity Improvement roadmap was developed to assist the business progress from FoundationalS&OP Maturity through to Adaptive then Enterprise maturity over a 2 year period

● A long term planning process was developed that acted as an over-arching strategic management planningprocess to assist with the heavily seasonal nature of the business

● A tactical, monthly S&OP process that was linked to the strategic planning process that `operationalised’the strategic planning decisions

● A re-engineered monthly process with clearly defined inputs, outputs, meeting outcomes, ownership andresponsibilities

● System and data enhancements and improvements that enabled more ̀ in-system’ processing to occur andsignificantly reduce the need to perform manual planning off-system in spread sheets

● A re-defined Demand Planning function including revised roles and responsibilities, departmental interfacepoints and operational focus that enabled the Sales function to focus on Sales and the Demand Planningfunction to focus on forecast development and maintenance