Definition: Sales and operations planning is the scheme that produces the best possible results, by leveraging best practices of; sales, marketing, procurement, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing and finance, to benefit the consumers, the customers and the enterprise to its best. The best planning schemes focuses on continuous improvements in creating value-added and stronger organizational readiness of a company.

Sales and operations planning is a disciplined collaboration process aimed to guarantee 100 percent service levels by providing the right information to the right people at the right time enabling them to make proactive planning decisions and execution controls on time.

Effective sales and operation planning brings together the right operational schemes under a single unified planning, information and decision process. Departments and other stakeholders work in collaboration to align the system capacity and constraints to meet rapidly changing consumer demands. Integration stands for; a systematic, a disciplined and a locked-in-time process. Right designed and developed sales and operation planning system focuses on all the core principles aiming to drive competitive advantages. This corresponds to persistent brand product offer, sales professionalism, higher sales confidents, and better fulfillment of consumer needs, higher consumer satisfaction and optimal product quality at the lowest possible cost proposition.

The operations business units; manufacturing, procurement, transportation and warehousing will all require different focal points that must be exploited to create competitive advantages and operations strengths. For example the Manufacturing focal point is; quality assurance, continuous improvement, assets and capacity utilization, workforce effectiveness and to eliminate wastages and rework. Procurement role and focuses is put on price negotiations, quality, credit terms and partnering with the suppliers. The objective is to secure raw materials, packages, parts and components and finished products delivered in right quantity, right quality, at right time and at the right cost. Transportation must focus on capacity utilization of the fleet by generating service consistencies in transportation to the warehouses and the customer sites. The objective is to optimize the daily fleet utilization trough transporting full truck load capacities. Transportation effectiveness is therefore an important part of the sales and operation planning schemes. Warehousing focuses is on capital investment in inventory and inventory turnover to maximize the cash-flow streams. Managing and balancing the inbound and outbound traffic flow to and from the warehouse is also important. Therefore, order picking, replenishment, housekeeping and space utilization are also part of the sales and operation planning optimization schemes. The Sales and Operation Planner’s objective is to assign at all times the optimal economical planning schemes that maximizes efficiencies and effectiveness of the total system as a whole. Winning culture is created through development of best-in-class operations competences and through executions of the most effective and efficient sales and operation planning schemes. This means carrying out the most effective production processes, procurement processes and transportation processes and warehousing processes. Well defined process integration is the core foundation to generate competitive advantages.