Execution Needs the S&OP Plans

This column addresses the role that the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process needs to play in support of an execution/operations manager. Often these managers don’t attend S&OP team meetings, especially when demand-supply planning members act on their behalf. However, in order to ensure that strategy drives execution and daily operations, S&OP plans that are driven by strategic goals and objectives need to, in turn, drive operations planning. To enable this, S&OP plans need to be detailed and translated into the functional language of execution managers, using a forecasting/planning hierarchy.