Sales and Operations Planning (SOP): The Resurgence of a 40 Year Old Idea

The way it is being touted in the press you would think that the BI related Sales and Operations Planning (SOP) is the latest new approach to managing business performance. In fact SOP is close to a 40 year old business process that allows aggregate planning to be assessed and passed down to specific finished goods planned in manufacturing companies. The early forms used planning bills of material and rough cut profiles in Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) systems to generate top down plans and bottom up assessment of performance. This along with excellent master scheduling business processes were best practices …read more