The IBP blog

professional articles, expert analysis

Business

What happens where there is no supply plan?

Stripping back all the frills and thrills you are left with the core purpose of IBP; to converge, align and integrate the financial plan, demand plan and supply plan. So, what happens when the supply plan changes daily, that is, there really is no static supply plan? However absurd this might sound, it’s not as uncommon as perhaps you might think. For business with large SKU proliferation, servicing a large distribution network or customer base, typical of FMCG organizations or OEM aftermarket channels, it is not unusual to allow orders to flow directly into the production planning processes. Perhaps, there…
Kim Britton
April 7, 2021
Planning

What happens when there is no supply plan?.

Stripping back all the frills and thrills you are left with the core purpose of IBP; to converge, align and integrate the financial plan, demand plan and supply plan. So, what happens when the supply plan changes daily, that is, there really is no static supply plan? However absurd this might sound, it’s not as uncommon as perhaps you might think. For business with large SKU proliferation, servicing a large distribution network or customer base, typical of FMCG organizations or OEM aftermarket channels, it is not unusual to allow orders to flow directly into the production planning processes. Perhaps, there…
Kim Britton
April 7, 2021
Integrated Business Planning

What Covid-19 taught us about IBP

Implementation of an Integrated business planning (IBP) process in a large matrix organization is far from short on challenges and even after several years these challenges often persists.  Navigating the dynamics of an organization that has deep seated roots lacking transparency, subterfuge, turf guarding and even egocentric behaviors can plague an IBP process often longer than the organization has the patience to endure.   How is it possible to integrate different functions in such an environment where supply chain poor performance is often the result of perceived bad forecast, a sales and marketing team that continues to miss sales targets due…
Debbie Evans
March 24, 2021
pexels-photo-704767.jpegManagment

Call it IBP, it’ll be ok!

The design has been approved, accountability defined and resources allocated, everything is set to implement IBP…wrong! In reality the muscle memory of most organizations is an overwhelming force which will not be changed without direct intervention. In most cases, the formal IBP reviews become incorporated into existing meetings with a promise of ‘doing IBP’. Leadership commitment to IBP results in a fervor to proclaim the term or validate data as coming from IBP. In fact, most legacy meetings continue unabated and the IBP reviews become an appendage to the established protocol. The possibility of redesigning the agenda so to capture…
Kim Britton
March 22, 2021
S&OPIntegrated Business Planning

S&OP vs IBP. What’s the difference?

It is often a common practice for businesses to think about Sales and Operations planning (S&OP) and Integrated Business planning (IBP) as terms that can be reflected interchangeably, however there are very distinct differences that are important to understand and are more than just nuances.    These differences can have important implications on how an organization approaches deployment with respect to ownership, accountability and how data is constructed for visibility and decision making.   Let’s compare these differences:   Characteristic S&OP IBP Purpose Balancing demand and supply to align appropriate capacity and resources Understand the consequence of integrated plans with respect to…
Debbie Evans
March 17, 2021
Business ImplementationCapability

Let’s Talk About Capability

Let’s talk about capability, I don’t mean people skills, I mean the systems, processes and tools which govern and control an enterprise. Conceptually, the objective of integrating a business is simple; integrated business planning aims to align the financial plan, demand plan and supply plan (‘align’ not necessarily meaning ‘make the same’). Business planning is predicated on the capability to facilitate change and steer the business to a desired destination. If the suite of business management systems are not capable, or have been wired in a way which impedes decisions to follow a desired course there is a significant challenge…
Kim Britton
March 15, 2021
Integrated Business Planning

IBP – Where Decisions Are Made

In the movie Field of Dreams, the character played by Kevin Costner repeatedly heard the words, “if you build it, he will come”, implying that if he built a baseball diamond in his cornfield the famous Shoeless Joe Jackson would return to play ball once again.   If only this worked when implementing IBP, if you build it value will come.  Unfortunately building an IBP process doesn’t necessarily mean value from the process will miraculously just appear like Shoeless Joe Jackson and we are left with a mechanized IBP process but dissatisfied with the results. When designing an IBP process…
Debbie Evans
October 23, 2020
IBPIntegration

Two Face of Demand Planning

In ancient Roman religion and myth, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings was Janus. Janus symbolized change and transitions such as the progress of past to future, from one condition to another, and from one vision to another. He represented time, simultaneously looking into the past with one face and the future with the other. Why the lesson into Roman myths; demand planning performs a critical pivot regarding the connectivity and integration between the forward-looking commercial outlook of an enterprise and short term, detailed supply/production planning. Positioned at the 3-month horizon (nominative cumulative lead-time) the demand plan looks…
Kim Britton
October 20, 2020