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Tag: supply chain planning

Mastering the role of a supply and operations planner: Key responsibilities and skills

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

In the fast-changing field of supply chain management, the job of a supply and operations planner is really important. As a supply and operations planner, you will have to make sure things go smoothly, from production to delivery. This article talks about what this job involves and the important skills you need for it.

What do supply and operations planners do?

Being a supply and operations planner is all about careful coordination. Your main goal is to make sure there’s a good match between what people want and what’s available.

This means working closely with different groups, like suppliers and distributors, to keep enough products in the right places at the right times. This helps prevent any problems or delays.

Key responsibilities of a supply and operations planner

1. Demand forecasting

Your keen analytical skills become important as you study old data and current market trends. This helps you guess how many products will be needed in the future. This information is useful for effective planning and resource allocation.

2. Inventory management

Acting as the key player between production and distribution, you have to judiciously manage inventory levels. This involves making decisions about reorder points, safety stock and economic order quantities.

3. Production scheduling

As a supply and operations planner, your role extends to crafting production schedules that align with demand expectations. You need to balance capacity, lead times, and resource availability. This ensures that production processes run like a well-oiled machine.

4. Collaborative coordination

Effective communication is your department, as you coordinate with various teams to ensure a seamless flow of information. You will have to coordinate with procurement, logistics and sales departments to maintain an integrated approach.

5. Risk management

The supply chain is vulnerable to disruptions. Your knowledge about finding and reducing these problems is important. You’ll need to spot possible issues and make backup plans to keep things going smoothly.

6. Continuous improvement

Striving for operational excellence, you will have to engage in ongoing process enhancements as a supply and operations planner. You will need to identify inefficiencies and implement solutions to achieve streamlined operations.

7. Cost optimisation

You will have to use smart ways to spend money wisely. You will have to look at costs, talk about good deals and find efficient sourcing options. This makes sure you make a profit while meeting the customer demand.

8. Supplier relationship management

Creating strong connections with suppliers is a big deal for you as a supply and operations planner. You’ll need to team up with them to ensure things arrive on schedule and are of good quality. Also, the deals are to be favourable. This teamwork helps in a well-functioning supply chain.

Skill requirements of supply and operations planner

Following are the various skills you must excel to start a career as a supply and operations planner:

1. Analytical expertise: A sharp eye for data interpretation and trend analysis is crucial. It is necessary for accurate demand forecasting and effective decision-making.

2. Communication skillfulness: Explaining complex information clearly is crucial. It helps different teams work well together, which is key to reaching the organisation’s goals.

3. Organisational agility: Dealing with the complexities of the supply chain needs you to be flexible and able to change with evolving scenarios. This is why having the skills to adapt to changes is important for becoming a supply and operations planner.

4. Problem-solving skills: A supply and operations planner is the go-to person for solving problems. You will need to fix things that go wrong and make processes work better, so everything keeps going smoothly.

5. Attention to detail: The understanding of managing inventory, schedules and resources is essential for streamlined operations. This also helps in effective supply chain management.

6. Negotiation skill: You should be able to negotiate agreements and terms with various stakeholders helps in securing favourable terms. This skill also helps to manage costs and maintain strong relationships.

7. Technology proficiency: Staying updated with supply chain management software and tools allows you to leverage technology. These tools are crucial for data analysis, process optimisation and real-time tracking. This helps in enhancing overall operational efficiency.

Final thoughts

As a supply and operations planner, you are the key player that keeps the wheels of the supply chain turning. Your strategic foresight, communication skills and analytical knowledge ensures that goods reach their destinations efficiently. Even in the face of challenges, you should effectively manage the inventory.

If you aspire to excel in this dynamic role, consider exploring the comprehensive supply chain management courses offered by Imarticus Learning. We have expertise in nurturing professionals across various industries. We empower you with the skills needed to thrive in the world of supply chain management.

The role of a supply and operations planner is a mix of coordination, analysis and strategic insight. Embracing this role means embracing the heartbeat of the supply chain.

Each decision as a supply and operations planner affects the entire network. As you embark on this journey, remember that Imarticus Learning stands ready to equip you. We provide you with the knowledge and expertise to excel in this rewarding field.

Supply Chain Planning: What is it and How is it Used?

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

In a world where global trade spins faster than our planet, there lies a pivotal axis ensuring every cog and wheel moves seamlessly—Supply Chain Planning (SCP). Just as a conductor leads an orchestra to ensure every instrument plays its part flawlessly, SCP harmonises the myriad elements within supply chain management.

But exactly what is supply chain planning, and what really goes on behind the curtains of this intricate dance? Let’s dive in.

Understanding Supply Chain Planning

At its essence, Supply Chain Planning is the strategic approach to optimise the production and distribution processes. It’s about determining what to produce, how much to produce, and where to store it to meet anticipated demand. By doing so, it reduces waste, minimises costs, and ensures timely deliveries.

Yet, SCP isn’t just about the here and now. It involves forecasting future demands, anticipating challenges, and devising strategies to navigate those challenges. In other words, it’s like playing chess, thinking several moves ahead.

Components of Supply Chain Planning

SCP isn’t a monolithic process. It’s an umbrella term covering several interrelated activities. Let us explore the key components to supply chain planning to unravel each.

  • Demand Planning: Estimating future customer demand using historical data, market trends, and predictive analytics.
  • Supply Planning: Deciding how to best meet that demand. This could involve ramping up production, sourcing more materials, or optimising inventory levels.
  • Production Scheduling: Detailing the manufacturing process, ensuring resources like manpower and machinery are effectively utilised.
  • Distribution Planning: Strategising the transportation of goods from manufacturing hubs to distribution centres, retailers, and finally, to customers.

The Digital Revolution in SCP

The world of Supply Chain Planning isn’t immune to the sweeping winds of digitisation. Advanced algorithms, AI-driven analytics, and real-time data feeds are transforming traditional SCP models. These tools provide unprecedented clarity, enabling businesses to make more accurate and agile decisions.

For those intrigued by this evolving realm, logistics management courses online can offer great assistance to strengthen an optimistic career. With courses like the Advanced Certification in Digital Supply Chain Management from IIT Guwahati, you can dive deep into the modern tools and techniques reshaping SCP.

Why Supply Chain Planning Matters

It’s tempting to think of SCP as a behind-the-scenes process significant only to businesses. However, its impacts are far-reaching:

  • Consumer Satisfaction: Efficient SCP ensures products are available when and where consumers want them.
  • Cost Efficiency: By optimising resources and minimising waste, SCP can lead to significant cost savings.
  • Sustainability: Effective planning reduces overproduction and waste, aligning businesses with eco-friendly practices.
  • Resilience: In a world where disruptions are inevitable, from geopolitical issues to natural disasters, robust SCP provides a roadmap to navigate these challenges.

Incorporating Flexibility: The Adaptive Side of SCP

In an ideal world, plans are made and executed to perfection. However, in the dynamic landscape of global trade, unforeseen changes are more of a rule than an exception. Modern Supply Chain Planning understands this. It’s no longer just about creating a robust plan but also about ensuring flexibility. This adaptive side of SCP allows businesses to quickly pivot in response to unexpected challenges, be it a sudden surge in demand, supply disruptions, or geopolitical shifts.

Integration with Other Business Domains

Supply Chain Planning doesn’t operate in isolation. It’s intertwined with other business domains like finance, marketing, and sales. For instance:

  • Finance: Budgetary constraints and forecasts can influence supply chain decisions. Investing in new machinery or opening a new distribution centre must align with the company’s financial health and goals.
  • Marketing: Promotional campaigns can lead to spikes in demand. SCP must be in sync with marketing to anticipate and cater to these changes.
  • Sales: Real-time sales data feeds into the demand planning aspect of SCP, ensuring accurate production schedules and inventory management.

By fostering a symbiotic relationship with these domains, SCP can truly optimise its strategies and drive holistic business growth.

The Human Element in SCP

While technology plays an ever-growing role in modern Supply Chain Planning, the human element remains irreplaceable. It’s people who provide insights that raw data might miss, cultivate relationships with suppliers and partners, and make judgment calls when unforeseen challenges arise. Training, continuous learning, and fostering a culture of collaboration are pivotal.

Investing in human capital – through mentoring, workshops, or specialised courses like those offered by esteemed institutions – ensures that the human side of SCP is as sharp and effective as its digital counterpart.

Wrapping Up: The Unsung Hero of Global Trade

Supply Chain Planning might not make headlines, but its influence is undeniable. From the smartphone in your pocket to the food on your table, SCP ensures goods move efficiently and sustainably across the globe.

So, the next time you marvel at the vast array of products available at the click of a button, spare a thought for the meticulous planning that made it possible.

Best Practices For Supply Chain Planning: Forecasting Models Review

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Best Practices For Supply Chain Planning: Forecasting Models Review

Multiple business units and internal supply chain team stakeholders are all involved in supply chain management. The appropriate people, making the right decisions based on the correct data and structure, are required for effective supply chain management.

However, reducing risks and overcoming the multiple stumbling blocks these complex supply networks provide is no easy task. Planning, sourcing supplies and materials, production, delivery, and returns are the five core processes of supply chain management, and each presents its own set of issues and considerations.

Integration, operations, purchasing, and distribution are the other four supply chain features to consider. 

Here are some of the best practices for supply chain planning

Emerging technologies and a more international supply chain are driving the growth of supply chain processes, yet trained employees are in limited supply to handle these operations. Just 38% of supply chain executives believe their present supply chain team can compete in today’s market. 

Effective cross-business execution is necessary for establishing an efficient supply chain. Too often, however, each supply chain function is considered a distinct entity, with business divisions, shifting objectives, time and resource restrictions, siloed systems and processes, and even location division. As a result, information gaps, delayed communication, errors, and policy contradictions are common.

A solid foundation is necessary to improve procedures and simplify a supply chain. The structural integrity of a supply chain determines its success. To establish a supply chain to fulfill your company’s objectives, you must first understand what you need from it.

Many businesses prefer centralized supply chain management, while others believe decentralization is the way to go. However, many dynamic and modern firms have devised a hybrid model that combines centralized strategy and decision-making with decentralized operations and workloads. This provides a more adaptable and flexible framework.

A hybrid system provides a variety of advantages. For starters, it enables supply chain management to work more closely with corporate governance and, as a result, align the supply chain with corporate objectives.

What are reviews of Forecasting Models?

The ISI-Web of Knowledge database was used to review forecasting journals systematically. Several publications were found and read, and forecasting methodologies pertinent to this study were thus chosen and evaluated. 

Findings: The primary forecasting models’ strengths, shortcomings, and applications get presented to assess trends and identify future issues. 

Limitations and implications of the study: It provides a theoretical reference framework for forecasting methodologies categorized as judgemental, consumer/market research, cause-effect, and artificial intelligence. Future studies will be able to evaluate these models qualitatively.

Discover Professional certification in supply chain management with Imarticus Learning

The supply chain management certification online provides cutting-edge information to those interested in taking the operations or supply chain analytics course. Students who enrol in this IIT Supply chain Management course will learn about Demand Planner and Data Scientist job titles.

Course Benefits For Learners:

  • We immerse students in relevant technologies and projects, such as six real-world projects that will give them a solid understanding of the sector to prepare them for a successful future as certified Supply Chain analysts.
  • Students who finish a supply chain management online course can prepare for highly sought-after professions such as Demand Planner or Data Scientist, which are in high demand among businesses today!
  • Students will learn to become data-centric and improve Supply Chain decision-making by utilizing the Python programming language.

Contact us through chat support, or drive to one of our training centers in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Gurgaon. 

Practical Applications Of AI To Supply Chain Planning

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Practical Applications Of AI To Supply Chain Planning

Supply chain workers use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve problems and improve global operations. Throughout supply chains, AI-enhanced technologies improve productivity, mitigate the effects of a worldwide labor shortage, and uncover better, safer methods to transfer commodities from one location to another.

You can now easily find AI applications throughout the supply chain, from the factory floor to the front door. Shipping businesses use the Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect and analyze data about items in transit and track the mechanical health and continual position of pricey trucks and transportation instruments.

Customer-facing shops are employing artificial intelligence (AI) to understand their core demographics better and generate more accurate forecasts about future behaviour. The list goes on and on – everywhere there’s a computer, there’s a list.

How can AI be used in supply chain management?

Chatbots for Operational Procurement

Streamlining procurement-related operations through the automation of Chabot capabilities necessitates access to robust and intelligent data sets, which the ‘procumbent’ or its ‘brains’ would be able to use as a frame of reference.

In terms of day-to-day work, Chatbots might be used to:

  • Speak with suppliers during minor interactions.
  • Set and deliver supplier actions for governance and compliance materials.
  • Make a purchase request.
  • Investigate and respond to internal queries about procurement functions 

Warehouse Supply And Demand Management Is Improving With Demand Forecasting

With algorithms and “constraint-based modeling,” a mathematical technique in which a minimum binds the consequence of each action and maximum range of constraints, machine learning finds patterns and influential elements in supply chain data. Thanks to this data-rich modeling, warehouse managers can make significantly more informed inventory stocking choices.

This big data predictive analysis is changing how warehouse managers manage inventory by delivering deep knowledge that manual, human-driven procedures and self-improving forecasting loops can’t provide.

Intelligence  in Logistics and Shipping with Autonomous Vehicles

In recent years, intelligence in logistics and shipping has been a focal point in supply chain management. Faster and more precise shipping cuts lead times and transportation costs, adds ecologically friendly aspects, lowers labor costs, and, most importantly, expands the gap between competitors.

AI is helping supply chain managers discover cost-cutting and revenue-boosting strategies.

Moving commodities worldwide is costly, and it is only getting more so. The cost of shipping products grew by 12% in 2020, the highest amount in five years.

A company uses AI to negotiate better shipping and procurement costs, monitor carrier contracts, and detect where supply chain adjustments might result in higher earnings. Users may access a centralized database that provides financial decision-making guidance based on practically every facet of supply chains.

Discover a supply chain management career with Imarticus Learning

The supply chain management certification provides cutting-edge information to those interested in taking the supply chain analytics course. Students who enroll in this Supply chain Management course will learn about Demand Planner and Data Scientist job titles.

Course Benefits For Learners:

  • We engage students in important technology and projects, such as six real-world projects, to provide them with a thorough grasp of the industry and prepare them for a successful career as certified Supply Chain analysts. 
  • Students who complete supply chain management and analytics courses can prepare for a highly sought-after career such as Data Scientist. This role is in great demand among organizations today! 
  • Using the Python programming language, aspirants will learn how to become data-centric and enhance Supply Chain decision-making.

Here’s How To Build A Connected System In Supply Chain Planning

Posted on by Imarticus Learning

Here’s How To Build A Connected System In Supply Chain Planning

In recent years, supply chain management has seen significant changes. Companies utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems primarily for cooperation and data tracking. Some businesses use a combination of spreadsheets and ERP systems to plan, while others employ cloud-based planning tools.

All diverse systems, technologies, and networks involved in a connected supply chain are interconnected. They must effectively interact with one another to ensure end-to-end visibility and efficacy across the supply chain.

Many companies that wish to improve their operations have this as their ultimate goal. Connected supply chains can benefit from automation technologies since they provide system cohesiveness while also enhancing efficiency by reducing human chores in the end-to-end process. In the event of a disturbance, process automation can also assist supply chains in maintaining their resilience and adaptability. This blog post will help you guide how to build a connected system in Supply chain planning.

What is the process of supply chain planning?

The process of planning a product from raw material to a consumer is known as supply chain planning. Supply planning, production planning, demand planning, and sales and operations planning are all part of this process.

Supply planning identifies the most efficient technique to meet the demands generated by the demand plan. The role is to strike a balance between supply and demand that meets the company’s financial and service goals.

Demand planning predicts demand to ensure that items get supplied on time. Demand planning helps enhance revenue forecasting accuracy and synchronize inventory levels with peak demand.

How To Build A Connected System In Supply Chain Planning?

To view the larger picture, use business processes.

You can’t replace your current IT assets when modernizing the supply chain. When it comes to supply chain transformation, you don’t have to start from scratch; you may improve the fundamental techniques you currently have.

To acquire the visibility you need to optimize operations, mapping your business processes is the best place to start. You can’t maximize something you don’t understand. This method will help you focus your transformation efforts by first pointing out which procedures should be automated.

Combine supply chain and enterprise planning.

The second essential step is connecting supply chain planning to sales, operations, and financial planning. Companies may make real-time adjustments to inventory estimates and supplies by synchronizing their short-term operational planning with more effective business planning procedures. 

When real-time S&OP solutions with enterprise-wide collaboration get implemented, critical stakeholders throughout the organization can immediately generate new scenarios and analyze how to use their resources efficiently to maximize revenue when an unforeseen incident occurs.

 Discover a supply chain management career with Imarticus Learning

The supply chain management certification online provides cutting-edge information to those interested in taking the operations or supply chain analytics course. Students who enroll in this IIT Supply chain Management course will learn about Demand Planner and Data Scientist job titles.

Course Benefits For Learners:

  • We engage students in important technology and projects, such as six real-world projects, to provide them with a thorough grasp of the industry and prepare them for a successful career as certified Supply Chain analysts. 
  • Students who complete supply chain management and analytics course can prepare for highly sought-after careers such as Demand Planner or Data Scientist, both of which are in great demand among organizations today! 
  • Using the Python programming language, aspirants will learn to become data-centric and enhance Supply Chain decision-making.