At the highest level the S&OP process includes an updated forecast that leads to a sales plan > production plan > inventory plan > customer lead time plan > new product development plan > strategic initiative plan and resulting financial plan.  At a basic level it ensures your forecasted sales plan can be met by operations.  Have you ever failed to meet capacity demands? How robust is your S&OP strategy and is it time for a review?  i4b can help you deliver a strong solution.

We can analyse the fitness of external supply chains for materials, components, labour and other services which your business relies on to keep it running smoothly and make sure they are not going to let you down.  The internal supply chain also needs to be lean and agile to cope with often conflicting demands – when did your last Supply Chain Audit take place and is it time for a new appraisal? i4b can do this for you.

Do you have access to financial, sales, production or failure and defect data but don’t have the resource in place to turn it into meaningful business insights and where to focus your attention?  Or perhaps you need to understand how to collate this in the first place?  i4b love big data as it can be turned into big improvements from correct handling and analysis.

Scheduling deals with the production of a required quantity of product within the required time frame. Workplace planning deals with allocation of resources to meet the schedule.  Have you ever fell short of a resource to meet the production plan? Has the Production plan not met the Customer delivery date?  This balance is pivotal to improving your OTIF and achieving ‘A’ rated customer satisfaction and i4b are available to bring this together for you.

If you need support in any projects, with Green Belt Certification and applied experience we can assist or lead your teams with basic training and support to implement Lean6Sigma techniques such as 5S, Just in Time, Poka-Yoke, Kanban, Kaizen, DMAIC and SPC.  This toolbox of methodologies needs top down support and can form part of a wider culture shift to re-align an organisation’s direction.

The logistics centres and the associated warehouses form the central interface between production and distribution when managing supply chains. As such they are pivotal to ensuring the day to day running of the operation and once the product is made, that it will be delivered to the customer at the right time, right quantity and at the right cost. At i4b we can make sure this department is firing on all cylinders.

Having experience as a Key User and Super User overseeing all aspects of several new system integrations, i4b have an amazing overview of what it takes to implement on time, without failure and with targeted relevant training from order entry through MRP, scheduling, production interface and into warehousing and despatch. Call on us for retrospective support, or go-live pre and post planning phases.