Design a global forecast consolidation tool and identify improvements for the component sales and operational planning process

Due to dramatic changes of the electronics market, the global component supply planning team of Philips is mainly responsible for managing global component supply risks for the midterm, and for creating improvement plans in line with risk management and commodity strategies. The so-called component Sales &Operations Planning (S&OP) is a decision making process that pro?actively shapes and balances both demand opportunities and the supply capabilities. However, this component S&OP process has significant limitations, causing ineffective planning from three perspectives. Firstly, the global team is facing insufficient cooperation from regional sites with respect to organizing monthly global component demand forecast preparation. For instance, not all sites comply with the proposed forecast template and provide all the requested information when submitting input files. Besides, the layouts of analysis and report format delivered to suppliers are not identical among different commodity groups. Secondly, the ineffectiveness also appears when the macroeconomic information or finished goods messages are converted into the component messages, and vice versa. This is mainly due to a missing mechanism to link the finished goods level and the component level. Thirdly, the attention on the capacity management seems not well balanced between scarcity and overstock, as well as between inventory availability and cost. This report presents the outcome of the project