We have decades of experience with supply driven planning, primarily in agricultural/fresh pack and primary food processing operations. We understand the constraints and nuances of variability in such supplies. We know how to develop pack plans and how to ensure they reconcile with customer contracts and demand planning. Whether it be fruit and vegetables or craft beer, we’ve seen much and know how to work with demand planning solutions and ERP solution providers who are typically much less familiar in these areas.

Separate from Supply Driven scenarios, many businesses today struggle with new levels of supply constraints. With our deep food experience we have gained much experience in how best to handle ingredient substitutions and re-formulations. With the speed customers want us to operate today, and the benefits of digital supply chains, producers and packagers can be more flexible than ever, offering levels of resilience unheard of only a few years ago.

PerfOps teams have strong skills and deep experience in sales and demand forecasting. From simple sales history plus adjustments to the emerging AI methods we can train, facilitate software selection and implementation and optimize forecasting methods. We ensure there are forecast versions and revisioning and our methods promote “what if” modeling.

Aggregating demand from different sources, and different types of sources, is a necessary part of advanced planning and scheduling. PerfOps has the experience to suggest demand aggregation methods, typically addressing forecast vs. sales contract vs. order/release and new product scenarios. The goal is to produce one best demand forecast to drive the best procurement and production planning decisions at each time window, with an understanding of risk at each stage.

Planning supply is more challenging in food and especially ag/fresh pack operations. We have the experience to drive supply planning from late stage and variable demand, such as with pack planning. We promote one source for decision making at each stage whether it be in a seasonal crop driven, continuous value-add processing or hybrid scenario.

Today’s MPS solutions pull MRP and Production Scheduling together into one function, thereby ensuring a solid foundation for decision making. There are challenges implementing MPS in supply driven scenarios but we have faced them before and know how to optimally deal with them.

PerfOps has foundational experience in S&OP, often training teams which are learning and developing formal methods in this area or improving current methods. We know how to implement S&OP inside or outside of ERP, how to improve visibility to all parties involved, how to document decisions in real-time in S&OP meetings and how to publish the results. We have been told our approach to S&OP is flexible and enabling as opposed to traditional and constraining.