Companies need decision-making processes and instances capable of reaching a consensus between the goals of the sales and marketing, operations and finance functions.

This is the purpose of the S&OP process, which reconciles the company’s sales plans and manufacturing capacities in the medium term, while respecting the service and financial objectives, in order to propose a single, workable plan.

At Argon Consulting, we believe that the best S&OP practices are based on 10 key points:

• a formal process includes all the players,
• a clear governance model with the active support of general management,
• explicit arbitration rules that reflect the company’s strategy,
• focus on exceptions and gaps,
• shared performance measurement,
• specific control of risks related to products in transition,
• the joint adoption of push and pull approaches,
• the use of tools that are adapted to the issues (in particular, simulation capacity and simplicity),
• the extension of the collaborative approach upstream and downstream,
• a continuous improvement initiative.

Argon Consulting supports its customers in the implementation or the improvement of S&OP processes in:

• the identification of the challenges related to existing malfunctions and the estimate of the cost of overhauling the organizations and tools (business case),
• the definition of governance (roles and responsibilities of players in the application of processes, and the various decision-making instances and processes) that is coherent with the company’s supply chain model,
• the overhaul of processes in line with best practices and the specifics of the company, organizing the deliverables of the preparation and meeting phases and defining the most suitable levels and timeframes of aggregation,
• the implementation of alerts, KPIs and scorecards,
• the selection and implementation of tools to support the S&OP (APS, dedicated optimization tools, collaborative tools, etc.): authoring of the specifications, management of calls for tender, implementation assistance, project management and risk management, etc.,
• management of the associated change management plan (changes in culture, behaviors and skills, training, communication, etc.).