From Excel Beginner to Expert: Level Up Your Game for Supply Chain Planning
Excel can be your best friend or your biggest nightmare.Most planners use it to collect data and make reports. Best planners go beyond that and do much more. Here’s how to go from “copy-paste...
From Excel Beginner to Expert: Level Up Your Game for Supply Chain Planning
Excel can be your best friend or your biggest nightmare.Most planners use it to collect data and make reports. Best planners go beyond...
How to Create a Sales Forecast in Excel: A Step-by-Step Guide for Demand Planners
If you’re a demand planner or just getting started with forecasting, building a sales forecast can feel overwhelming. Excel is a great tool to accomplish this. Here’s a simple, actionable,...
12 Fundamental Calculations Every Demand and Supply Planner Must Master
We want to be data-driven in demand and supply planning. This helps us navigate the questions thrown at us during the S&OP (sales and operations planning) meetings. I share the Spartan credo:...
How to do SKU Optimization Step-by-Step
SKU optimization is a daunting task. Nobody likes it.For the commercial team, it's especially painful.Just the thought of cutting down SKUs is terrifying. But here’s the truth: it’s one of those...
Demand Planner vs. Supply Planner
They are NOT the same. They have different objectives. They perform different activities. They live in different worlds. But, of course, their worlds are interconnected. This infographic about...
12 Red Flags in Inventory Management & How to Fix Them
Inventory ruins profits and bleeds cash. For Apple CEO Tim Cook "Inventory is fundamentally evil." Supply chain has the power to turn this demon into a competitive advantage. The infographic...
What’s S&OP?
There are many definitions of S&OP. Too many. This is one of the few acronyms in supply chain that everyone recognizes—Sales and Operations Planning. I see this with my LinkedIn posts; I don’t...
It’s impossible to talk about supply chain without mentioning inventory.
"It’s impossible to talk about supply chain without mentioning inventory." These were the words of Dr. Closs, my Supply Chain professor at Michigan State University—and I couldn’t agree more. In...
What’s Demand Planning? Explained Simple
Have you ever walked into a store, desperate to buy your favorite product, only to find an empty shelf? Or maybe you've noticed some stores slashing prices to clear out excess stock. Chances are,...
Discover Supply Chain
‘What do you do?’ is a terrifying question for most supply chain practitioners. I have been making the attempt for years and it is still a challenge to provide a concise and meaningful answer. Even...
Power Query Basics for Supply and Demand Planners
Demand planners are often inundated with data from numerous sources. In order to develop good forecasting models for a product or service, you have to understand both local and global trends,...
Co-manufacturers in S&OP/ IBP: Friends or Enemies?
Did you know that Nike outsources 100% of footware and apparel manufacturing? The contract manufacturing industry is like secret AI, growing fast but just a few talk about it. Research indicates...
How to Use AI to Generate Excel Formulas for Supply Chain
As a Supply Chain Manager, you have probably used Microsoft Excel for inventory control, financial-supply chain planning and a myriad of other tasks. More often than not, multiple employees and...