Sven transitioned from customer service to demand planning in 2006, taking a demand planner role at Black & Decker. He has worked in S&OP and demand planning ever since at companies including BASF, Omega Pharma, Wolf Oil, and most recently, Petronas Lubricants where he is currently working as Global Network Planning & Optimization Manager. Here, he and his team built a Demand Planning process bridging regional HQs and EU markets to support the regional S&OP process. Sven is now member of the Global Centre of Excellence, responsible for the Demand Planning Process around the world. His focuses are aligning the process at global level, running regional capability analysis, providing global training, and executing S&OP maturity assessments. Sven holds a degree in Economics and Languages from AP Hogeschool Antwerpen, Belgium, and is an IBF Certified Professional Forecaster (CPF).
Over the past 4 years, we have been managing the transformation of S&OP at Petronas Lubricants International. The scale of this project was vast, which necessitated not only a sound understanding of the S&OP process, but a solid approach to project management and company-wide change management. This hands-on session will explain our journey of shaping strategy, implementing new business processes for S&OP stakeholders and managing change for all those related to the process (most people in the company). We will discuss not only the process and tools but also the all-important changes in culture and mindset that are required to inspire adoption of S&OP across different regions. I will share our story, complete with challenges, problems, and practical tips to help you with your own journey.
- The importance of change management when it comes to implementing global S&OP
- How the process was established and rolled out in different geographical areas
- How a project team needs to work “behind the scenes” prior to approaching a particular region
Sven Smets will also share cutting-edge S&OP, Analytics, Data Science and Demand Planning insights at IBF’s Business Planning, Forecasting & S&OP Conference: Europe in Amsterdam, Netherlands (14–16 November, 2018).