Having a better view of what tomorrow holds is gold dust in most businesses. If you knew what all of tomorrows orders might be (or even 80% of them) imagine how much more prepared you could be.
Actually, many of your customers already know what their order on you will be as they already have their customer orders received and ready to go, so logically they already have a good idea what tomorrow's net stock position will be, they can predict tomorrows orderon you with a high level of certainty.
So if we take a these ideas and number of tools and apply them we have a much better view of tomorrow -
1. If you have a positive release system with your main suppliers you should know what will arrive in your warehouse tomorrow as that was shipped on Friday from Germany, so you know what is planned to arrive.
2. Your customers already have most of tonight's shipments lined up ready to be picked so they already know tomorrows stock position.
3. For some of your customers who receive orders tomorrow for shipment tomorrow, they already have a 70% view of what they have to ship, so you could have a 70% view of what they will have in stock at the end of play tomorrow, consequently you will have a view on what the order from them will be the day after tomorrow.
Start building this together into your plan and you have a much better view of tomorrow, what you can prepare and what is still unknown.
If 80% of your tomorrow was clear and planned and you only had to respond to the 20% how much more manageable would your day be.
Intelligent exception management, real-time data analysis, machine learning technologies, fast re-plan and reprocessing of your replenishment plans and predictive analytics will truly give you a grasp on tomorrow that will give you an advantage over your competitors.
How far can you see?
How confident can you be?
How fast can you reprocess your plan?
Dave Food