Supply Chain Management in Sales and Operations Planning. Improvement in Efficiency and Saving Money

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: 2,0, Heilbronn University, language: English, abstract: In this paper the question is raised, which possibilities exist to improve the efficiency in supply chain management. A very useful and innovative tool is Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). Mainly it looks after a balance between demand and supply, and it connects also the supply chain planning with the associating and involved operating sections. By reaching a harmonization of all steps in the supply chain, and by considering the financial information many benefits will be enabled. These results offer a better view into future capacity or sales problems, a higher customer ser-vice and faster changes of production rates. All in all, you improve in fulfilling the cus-tomer's wishes. In order to be successful, good forecasts and some simulations are very important to coordinate the production with the predicted demand. Next up, there is an explanation of all relevant planning steps and challenges to make the supply chain run better.