Chapter 4

Inventory and Supply Planning

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.

—Peter Drucker

At the conclusion of the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, a sales and operations plan consisting of sales targets, service-level targets, and inventory targets has been established. At this point, planners are tasked with operationalizing the sales and operations plan. This means figuring out when to place orders on suppliers, what the size of those orders should be, where products should be produced, when manufacturing should begin production, and where inventory should be stored and in what form.

This chapter focuses on the challenges that planners face once the sales and operations plan ...

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