What is supply chain planning?

One of the areas that has been gaining attention in industries due to its criticality is the supply chain management, or supply chain. Increasing the complexity of productive chains and their consequences at high costs, ruptures and loss of competitiveness for those who do not correctly address this challenge only because we do not know what the future will look like. If we knew exactly what the future demand will be like, how long it will take to produce 'x' products and we were sure of supplies and deliveries in certain quantities and deadlines, we could use the simple arithmetic to solve our problems. But "life as it is" is not like that. Where there is uncertainty, there will be planning. While Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a broader concept that treats all aspects of the supply chain, from planning to execution, the supply chain planning (SCP) is more directed to the first and part of SCM.

Thus, supply chain planning planning is the set of activities to anticipate and decide how much of each material will be supplied, in what form, and what time to meet a still uncertain demand. In short, this will bring us the answers to our main decision goal: What responsiveness do we want to meet what level of service? It is precisely the inaccuracy and complexity that make this process full of steps and trade-offs, with several areas involved.

Bibliographies on the subject can vary slightly, especially if we look from the conceptual or technological perspective. Let's find many materials talking about S&OP and IBP, others focused on demand planning, those directed to operations, and so on. A reference in the area that adds all these perspectives in a SCP synthesis is expert Gerald Feigin, Harvard -applied mathematics and consultant in large companies. It divides SCP into 3 major areas: Demand Planning Planning, Integrated Sales and Operations Planning (Pivo or S&OP) and Inventory and Supplies Planning. Stratifying the last topic as we understand its different functions and even technologies applied and punctuated by eminences like Gartner, we can, with a touch of poetic and consultative freedom, divide the SCP into the following main topics:

• Demand planning;

• S&P/IBP;

• Inventory planning;

• Production planning;

• Supply planning;

• Logistic planning.

To know what each of these steps is, what are their applications in supply chain planning, what technologies are best suited to support execution as well as the main forms of practical use of each of the topics covered above, we have prepared a complete and completely free ebook for you . Click here , fill out the form and receive your ebook immediately!

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