Sales and Operations Plans

The Sales and Operations Plans module (S&OP) can quickly calculate the work loads generated by the production plans on global resources to meet sales forecasts by commercial families. The planning horizon that is typically the year. Planning periods, generally correspond to months. Constraints can imposed on operations. A complete valuation is performed.

When demand is seasonal, the work loads may generated over capacity requirements during some periods of time and under capacity utilization during some others. The creation of inventories to anticipate demand can smooth the work load. Similarly, if the plant closes (for vacation or maintenance), we must build up anticipation inventory to continue to satisfy the demand during these periods.

Commercial constraints (defined on Family Items) and operational constraints (defined on Resource Items) can be entered.

The production plans should be adjusted so that the resource load profiles are consistent with the production capacity. This leads to build up an anticipation inventory. This creates voluntary inventory variations to meet the appropriate production plan.

The total cost of these plans can be assessed from many parameters described on the Family and Resource Item window. A search function allows the optimal solution through a Linear programming algorithm.

When production plans are frozen, they can be disaggreated into production requirements for manufactured products that make up each family.