ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN THE PLANNING CHALLENGE?

<!– –>Matching demand and capacity precisely can be a complex, time-consuming challenge.

Take this wooden puzzle for example.

Getting those last few pieces of wood to fit isn’t going to be easy. But what if you had lots of pieces in various shapes and sizes so there was always a shape that fitted a space precisely?

Solving a planning puzzle is easy – as long as you’re willing to throw resources at it. If you have 200 service engineers when there’s only work for 100, it’s easy enough to incorporate all your business rules and labor regulations to arrive at a feasible schedule. The real challenge lies in improving your KPIs by doing more with less: Any reduction in the number of resources dramatically reduces the number of feasible schedules.

Arriving at an ‘optimal’ schedule (one that’s feasible and enables you to achieve key business goals) unaided, is about as likely as winning the lottery.

There’s a world of difference between buffers that enable a business to deal intelligently with volatility, and buffers that exist because the business has very little control over its operations.

Which kind do you have – and how can you tell?

What should a supply chain manager in search of hidden optimization potential do next? Find out why a visit to Disneyland may not be such a bad idea when you catch the final installment in the series.