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Supply Chain Management: SAP Supply Chain Planning
The art of orchestrating supply chain planning can be intricate. Unforeseen changes in supply, demand, and market changes are a test in agility. The ability to synchronize planning for sustainable growth is the key to building a resilient supply chain.
Supply Chain Planning Defined
Supply chain planning (SCP) is a forward-looking process. It is coordinating assets to optimize the delivery of goods, services, and information from suppliers to consumers. Organizations can leverage solutions to help navigate the complexities of planning and orchestrating supply chain operations flawlessly. SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is powered by SAP S/4HANA memory and is a cloud-based planning software for supply chain management. IBP is a process for aligning a company’s business goals across operational functional areas.
Supply Chain Management: SAP Supply Chain Planning
The art of orchestrating supply chain planning can be intricate. Unforeseen changes in supply, demand, and market changes are a test in agility. The ability to synchronize planning for sustainable growth is the key to building a resilient supply chain.
Supply Chain Planning Defined
Supply chain planning (SCP) is a forward-looking process. It is coordinating assets to optimize the delivery of goods, services, and information from suppliers to consumers. Organizations can leverage solutions to help navigate the complexities of planning and orchestrating supply chain operations flawlessly. SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is powered by SAP S/4HANA memory and is a cloud-based planning software for supply chain management. IBP is a process for aligning a company’s business goals across operational functional areas.
Key integration elements are:
- Supply and demand
- Finance and Operations
- Functions and business processes
- Strategy outcomes
- Non-financial measures
- Cash flow, costs, and revenues.
A structured process that comes from an IBP approach enables companies to make better informed and fact-based decisions. It provides planning, what-if scenario capabilities, and real-time demand commitments, considering constraints. Increased visibility enables companies to incorporate insights from supply chain projections, financial projects, and strategic plans. There are unmatched benefits of IBP for SAP Supply Chain Planning, like optimization of logistics, improved cross-functional collaboration, planning agility, risk mitigation, and improved forecast accuracy.
SAP Supply Chain Planning yields several benefits:
- Decreased costs
- Increased profits
- Reduction in delays
- Improved efficiency
- Increase in output
- Better cooperation.
Vendor partners that can offer software solutions or operational intelligence include – SAP, Reveal or Gib.
Key Considerations for SAPinsiders are:
- Video Q&A with Eric Jones from GIB on Connecting the Dots Between Supply Chain Planning and Execution. Learn how to tame many supply chain complexities with end-to-end -supply chain solutions by watching this video. The discussion gives a perspective on why supply chain planning tools are an imperative in today’s highly complex supply chains.
- Demand Planning Alerts Increase the Accuracy of your Forecasts. David Ducray explains that demand planners are often faced with converting large amounts of data into an accurate forecast. Review different ways to spot trends and errors in data by using alerts to help you create a more accurate forecast. Allow planners the ability to manage by exception.
- Meeting Demand with a Constrained Supply Using Product Allocation in SAP APO Global ATP. Alok Jaiswal reviews the process flow of how product allocation can be used in SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO). This utilizes global available-to-promise (ATP) to meet customer requirements by managing the supply of scarce products.
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Safety Stock Planning – Part 3: SAP Add-on Simulation of Safety Stock, Calculating & Simulating Safety StockMay 2, 2025 — SAP offers consulting solutions to enable the first step in demand-driven planning, the strategic inventory positioning. For this you can use the consulting solution MRP Monitor to detect which of your materials should be buffered.
10 minute read
Navigating Complexity: How CloudPaths Strengthens Supplier CollaborationApr 23, 2025 — In today's complex global supply chains, organizations must prioritize robust supplier collaboration beyond simple transactions to enhance visibility, foster partnerships, and effectively utilize technology in order to navigate challenges and improve overall performance.
4 minute read
Supply Chain’s Essential Role in Automotive Start-UpsSep 5, 2024 — When INEOS Automotive was founded in 2017 as a new automotive manufacturer, it faced a unique challenge. It aimed to start production of a new vehicle in just four years, which meant it needed to establish end-to-end supply chain processes, including information and material flows, as efficiently as possible.
4 minute read
Workforce Shortages in Supply Chain and Logistics: A Call to Action for SAP UsersApr 29, 2024 — A study by Descartes Systems Group reveals a severe workforce shortage in the supply chain and logistics industry, impacting operations, finances, and customer service. A significant 76% of leaders reported workforce shortages, with 37% describing the issue as high to extreme. Particularly, transportation and warehouse functions are the most affected. Additionally, there is a notable difficulty in hiring knowledge workers necessary for today's technology-dependent supply chain operations.
For SAP users, addressing these challenges is crucial. They need to leverage SAP's HR and workforce planning modules to enhance recruitment, training, and retention strategies, aligning workforce management with business demands. This approach can help mitigate the adverse effects of workforce shortages by utilizing technology to streamline and optimize workforce capabilities in the supply chain and logistics sectors.
2 minute read
Unifying Data Sources for Accurate Near-Term Demand Forecasting with Google CloudApr 29, 2024 — In the domain of demand planning within SAP systems, there is a growing recognition of the need to incorporate external data sources alongside traditional internal ones. This approach is encouraged by Google Cloud’s "Better Together" partnership with SAP, which promotes integrating external datasets, such as real-time weather updates and marketing trends, with SAP’s internal data. This integration helps organizations capture a fuller picture of the factors influencing demand, such as external events and consumer behavior shifts.
The use of Cortex Demand Sensing within this framework provides organizations with tools like impact alerts, which notify of forecast anomalies driven by factors like unexpected weather or promotional activities. Further, integration with Google Cloud tools such as BigQuery, Vertex AI, and Looker enriches data analysis, enabling the identification of key demand drivers and enhancing predictive model accuracy. This holistic data approach aids in optimizing various business aspects, including promotions, inventory control, and demand-supply balance, ultimately leading to better demand forecasting accuracy.
1 minute read
Purpose-built “Powered” Supply Chains with KPMGFeb 26, 2024 — When embarking on supply chain transformation, organizations often look for results while minimizing risk, along with streamlined and compliant technology. From supply chain initiatives focused on customer experience metrics, responding to a supply continuity issue to product movements, organizations often need a guided process with supply chain assets and accelerators to jump start their supply chain transformation. To enable organizations to transform their business functions, KPMG firms have designed a suite of proprietary tools and methodologies known as Powered Enterprise. This methodology encompasses multiple dimensions. Primarily, it functions as an implementation methodology, addressing diverse facets and the complete process taxonomy crucial for standard business operations. While it does not encompass every aspect, it furnishes a diagnostic overview and scrutinizes specific areas such as SAP implementations and supply chain applications.
6 minute read
Supply Chain GRC: Gain Control of Your Supply Chain ProcessesJun 14, 2023 — Most companies want to grow their business as fast as possible, but they need stay in control of their supply chain process and avoid unnecessary risks. By implementing a Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) system, organizations can monitor processes and ensure they are defined, managed, planned, and executed correctly. Recent SAPinsider benchmark research points to the volatility of supply chain process as a core driver impacting GRC strategy and investment among SAP organizations.
1 minute read
ifm Supply Chain for Planning and Execution TransformationMay 16, 2023 — Extending the core ERP capabilities with additional solution functionality can be approached in two ways, namely "add-on" and "add-in" solutions. When it comes to add-on solutions, integration of data, people, and processes is required, which can be a costly and time-consuming process. On the other hand, add-in solutions are natively embedded in the ERP system, eliminating the need for extensive integration efforts.
This technology brief will explore ifm Supply Chain, an SAP partner for over 25 years, whose supply chain solutions are natively integrated and deployed into the SAP ecosystem. Originally founded in Germany in 1992, the company's GIB software offers an integrated approach to streamlining demand planning, production scheduling, procurement processes, and inventory control. The company’s solutions deliver superior efficiency by eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming integration efforts.
6 minute read
Creating Value Through End-to-End Supply Chain PlanningMay 15, 2023 — Increasing supply chain complexity, coupled with rapidly evolving customer demand, has given rise to a set of challenges supply chain leaders have not encountered before. What extenuates these challenges for many organizations is the siloed approach to planning and tackling supply chain challenges.
6 minute read
Webinar: Building Resilient and Agile Supply Chains Leveraging Data, Analytics and AutomationApr 18, 2023 — Supply chain challenges and associated risks are growing exponentially. These challenges surface in many forms, like unprecedented fluctuations in demand and supply, sudden disruptions impacting sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution, a proliferation of product offerings, and geopolitical and regulatory changes. These challenges have only intensified during the pandemic. As businesses evolve their supply chains to address the Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) business environments in which they operate today, they add to the complexities that already exist in their supply chains. These challenges have accelerated supply chain digital transformation initiatives across industries. Data, analytics, and automation tools play a crucial role in the digital transformation tool chest. We hypothesized that SAPinsiders are keen to leverage data, analytics, and automation tools to build resilient and agile supply chains to address operating uncertainties. To validate this hypothesis, SAPinsider surveyed businesses and supply chain professionals within the SAPinsider community on inventory management and optimization aspects from November 2022 to February 2023.
1 minute read