Creative S&OP

摘要

Benefitting from the steady and substantial growth of the home and small business networking market, Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems Inc., has built a product portfolio managing more than 1,000 items across a complex and vastly extended value chain. In the early days, growth was easier to manage with the firm's existing sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. However, as the product portfolio grew, increasing demand for its solutions was accompanied by a larger supplier community and constantly changing supply chain network. rnIt wasn't long before Linksys began to show signs of inefficiency. Customer demand and available inventory rarely aligned with projections, causing a high level of nervousness among members of the supply chain. This led to the need for expedited orders for some products and excess inventory for others.