Integrated Tactical Planning

CHAPTER 5Managing the Value: Supply Scheduling and Execution

As we move into the third of the three core plans, there is a distinct change in thinking. In the product area, the thinking is about effectively leveraging the opportunity to grow margin through future product portfolio plans. In the demand area, it is about optimizing the margin with existing products and customers. When we enter the realm of supply, it is about cost‐effectively meeting those requirements in the business and also about ensuring alignment of the whole supply chain to drive competitive advantage. Typically, the Integrated Tactical Planning process will be at a supply point, or individual node of the supply chain, and will be at a deeper level of granularity than the Integrated Business Planning process; it could even be at a SKU or deeper subfamily level but still be governed by the overall supply chain strategy and plans coming out of the most recent Integrated Business Planning cycle.

The definition of supply point could be a distribution center, a manufacturing facility, a regional or global hub, or, for one of our clients, a product category level. In that category structure, it was convenient and coincidental that the manufacturing and distribution supply points were almost exactly aligned with the marketing categories, but, unfortunately, that is not such a common occurrence. We will share more on the potential matrix structures for consideration in the process design in Chapter 7.

We will cover ...