An S&OP Maturity Model

AN S&OP MATURITY MODEL By Larry Lapide (This is an ongoing column in The Journal, which is intended to give a brief view on a potential topic of interest to practitioners of business forecasting. Suggestions on topics that you would like to see covered should be sent via email to llapide@ mit.edu). In the spirit of this special issue on the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process this column represents a recap of the three-part series I ran in the Journal of Business Forecasting starting with the Fall 2004 issue. The column highlights and focuses on the technology needed to support the S&OP process. The Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process has been around for decades. I have discussed it in most of my presentations on demand planning and forecasting since the mid-1990s and have been polling audiences along the way. One-third of the early audiences were comprised of individuals from companies that had implemented S&OP, while for recent audiences the number has been hovering over 80%. Clearly the S&OP process became more prevalent over the last decade or so, with a crescendo of interest in the last few years. An indicator of the interest in the S&OP process is the fact ...