Author: Niels

Niels has 20 years of experience in supply chain and business planning and enjoy writing a thing or two every now and then. I'm on the advisory board of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting and had the honour to have been labelled as "one of Foresight's most visionary authors." My articles cover company culture, strategy execution, S&OP, IBP, automation, augmentation and human centricity in business planning. As children's book author, publisher and mental toughness advocate, I hope to make a positive contribution by helping children learn about confidence, resilience and a positive mindset. My book series 'My Strong Mind' has been published in 10 languages.
decision intelligence, S&OP

IBP decision centricity study: a lack of managing bias, speed, digitization, incentives & learning

IBP and its predecessor S&OP were developed as executive decision-making forums. In support of effective decision making in the IBP process, we could expect many decision centric capabilities in an organization. Improving IBP decision centricity results in improvements like: 👉 Increased decision speed 👉 Improved decision quality 👉 Reduced decision bias 👉 Less analytics waste 👉 Effective decision learning 👉 Improved engagement with decision process … Continue reading IBP decision centricity study: a lack of managing bias, speed, digitization, incentives & learning

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decision intelligence, S&OP

Beware of ‘Decision Washing’ in Supply Chain Planning

Planners make plans… With their plans they facilitate decision making in the S&OP process, rather than making decisions with a direct business impact themselves. Planning systems create plans…or schedules… The outcomes of advanced planning systems (APS), as advanced as they may be, are plans, schedules, analytics, insights, alerts, scenario’s, at best recommendations…not S&OP decisions! An APS system can be considered a system of record for … Continue reading Beware of ‘Decision Washing’ in Supply Chain Planning

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decision intelligence, Leadership, S&OP

The State of Decision Centricity in IBP

Recently, I published below Decision-Centric S&OP infographic in collaboration with Marcia Williams. We had a lot of positive responses. A focus on decision making is not new. In the end, S&OP was created as an executive decision making forum. But I think we certainly can get more value out of understanding and framing our decisions better, orchestrating the decision making process, minimising bias, capturing decisions … Continue reading The State of Decision Centricity in IBP

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decision intelligence, S&OP

Decision-Centric versus Traditional S&OP

Over the last couple of years, I have been mentioning Decision-Centric S&OP/IBP in my articles. In 2021, I explored the efficacy between decision automation and augmentation for different decision horizons and proposed a new narrative for IBP that includes decision automation, capturing and learning, with IBP managers who are incentivised to improve decision quality. Other articles and blogs followed Decision centricity supported by the digitization … Continue reading Decision-Centric versus Traditional S&OP

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decision intelligence, Digital supply chain

Solving Your IBP Problems With the World’s First IBP GPT

Over the weekend I made my first GPT. It’s an IBP GPT, maybe the world’s first. Although you can make GPT’s more sophisticated, you can start rather simple. That’s what I did. I took an open AI membership, created a GPT, wrote a prompt, wrote four prompt indicators. Told it to be friendly and gave it some other guidance. My aim was to help an … Continue reading Solving Your IBP Problems With the World’s First IBP GPT

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decision intelligence, S&OP

Embracing Decision Intelligence to Enhance Integrated Business Planning

Many Integrated Business Planning (IBP) cycles around the world are based on a 30-year-old process definition supported by similarly aged planning concepts. This traditional IBP is often not sufficient anymore for a fast-changing world, where speed of decision making and taking the right action means competitive advantage. Well run, traditional IBP can have many positive outcomes, but there are also many limitations like sequential process … Continue reading Embracing Decision Intelligence to Enhance Integrated Business Planning

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decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, Positive mindset

Automation has Limits, Learning has no Boundaries

Low-touch, or touchless planning, forecasting and other types of supply chain knowledge work automation have been around for a while now. A trend that started with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the back-office, automating dull and repetitive tasks like invoice matching, evolved into cognitive automation and autonomous execution of more advanced supply chain processes using intelligent agents. I envisioned autonomous IBP in 2016 and published … Continue reading Automation has Limits, Learning has no Boundaries

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decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, Leadership

Outside-in planning: a big elephant that needs a bite-sized approach

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” Desmond Tutu Outside-in thinking in theory Outside-in thinking makes sense. It has been suggested to include a market, customer, and competitor view in a strategy definition for more than 50 years. It is not new in strategy. It is not new in supply chain management either.  Lee’s uncertainty framework (2002) shows … Continue reading Outside-in planning: a big elephant that needs a bite-sized approach

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decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, S&OP

Decision Centric IBP is Becoming a Reality

A Vision coming to Life IBP decisions can be segmented by machine centric S&OE decisions and human centric IBP decisions. This new planning paradigm was suggested by my colleague Hein Regeer and I in a Foresight article in 2021 Our article was a continuation of my articles autonomous supply chain planning (2019) and Technology Support in Integrated Business Planning: Automation, Augmentation and Human Centricity (2021), where I lay out a … Continue reading Decision Centric IBP is Becoming a Reality

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decision intelligence, Digital supply chain

How to Overcome the Supply Chain Decision Gap

As John Lennon said, “Live is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”. Every supply chain plan or schedule meets variations or disruptions that require corrective decisions and actions. However, a gap remains between data, plans, insights and taking action to solve short and long term issues and grasp opportunities. I called this the “Decision Gap” in a recent webinar. A week later I … Continue reading How to Overcome the Supply Chain Decision Gap

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