The manufacturing industry is facing a wave of change. A constant need to reduce costs, deliver goods faster, and become more environmentally-friendly is combined with higher competition from global market sourcing and rapidly changing consumer demands. These pressures are forcing manufacturers to find ways to drive innovation not only in their product offerings but also within their processes in order to survive.

Gaining efficiency across end-to-end supply chain planning is one of the key ways to achieve this, but for many manufacturers the reality of achieving a profitable balance of supply vs demand is a colossal headache of disjointed, manual processes. In this blog, we explore why manufacturers are turning to an Integrated Business Planning approach to provide a more productive alternative.

What are the challenges of planning in discrete manufacturing?

Manufacturing supply chains are typically supported by multiple IT systems across different departments and divisions. Each one contains a wealth of information relating to a specific process, but sits disconnected from the others, leading to:

• Disjointed strategic, financial, and operational plans, compiled at different levels of the organization without input from all departments
• Difficulty in achieving collaboration in decision-making, with each department working to their own plans and schedules rather than together towards one goal
• Little visibility into the impact of one department or production line’s activities on another (without a considerable amount of manual work to try and combine the data)
• Multiple reporting approaches creating multiple versions of the truth, making it difficult to plan based on an accurate foundation
• Lack of ability to simulate the effect of strategic initiatives on performance or the impact of operational changes on financial results

How do you overcome manufacturing planning challenges with an integrated business platform?

Integrated planning solutions combine data from every stage of the manufacturing process to provide a single point of truth for all planning and reporting activities. This enables planning to be conducted at a business-wide level rather than in silos, with full transparency over the impact each process or factor has on another.

IBP is fast-becoming the manufacturing industry norm, thanks to its ability to:

• Ensure there is no delay between demand planning and the supply chain, meaning a change in market demand can immediately be recorded and responsive action plans immediately activated instead of waiting for a ‘signal’ to trickle down to all departments
• Help to identify potential areas for cost savings or efficiency improvements at each stage of the manufacturing process by make it easy to cross-examine data
• Enable strategic business goals to be cascaded down into financial and operational objectives with full visibility of how these will be achieved through the activities of each production line or department
• Empower managers to become strategic business partners by making it easy to identify opportunities for efficiency and output improvements in all divisions
• Drive collaboration amongst production, management, finance, and other teams through a single source for planning which is contributed to by all
• Instill accountability over results by making it clear which department is responsible for achieving them

Without this approach, manufacturers will continue to face inefficiencies throughout the various stages of production, leaving them struggling to keep up with those who are already benefiting from greater accuracy and transparency in planning activities.

For more information or inspiration on where to get started, watch our webinar on “Driving Manufacturing Efficiency with Integrated Business Planning”.