Category: S&OP

decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, S&OP

Human AI Collaboration in Supply Chain Planning

I recently did a Podcast with Mark Blackwell from Arkaro, which I embedded (41:28 min) and the executive summary underneath. Mark and I had a great conversation. Executive Summary Why do planners spend 50% of their time on tasks that waste their brain power? Niels van Hove, globally recognised thought leader in integrated business planning and human-AI collaboration, argues that the competitive advantage in supply … Continue reading Human AI Collaboration in Supply Chain Planning

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, S&OP

The Evolution of Demand Planning: Augmentation & AI-Agents  

Summary this paper discusses how AI decision agents will help evolve demand planning from a function focused on creating a point plan, to a gap detection, gap closure and decision management function, where demand planners provide cross functional aligned decision input to the Demand Review with significantly increased speed, consistency and accuracy. It highlights how demand planning decisions will be digitised, augmented and status managed … Continue reading The Evolution of Demand Planning: Augmentation & AI-Agents  

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
S&OP, Supply Chain

Thank You

Dear reader, As I’m starting 2025 it is time for some change. I will finish my editorship at Foresight, and I will stop this blog supply chain trend. For 15 years I’ve been writing this blog and related articles & field studies on average monthly. Content was anchored in S&OP and supply chain planning but touched visioning, strategy execution, company culture & behaviours, communication, philosophy, … Continue reading Thank You

Unknown's avatarNiels2 Comments
decision intelligence, Leadership, S&OP

Key Elements of Decision Centricity in Effective IBP Processes

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. But how decision centric is your S&OP/IBP process, your meetings, your organization? Any idea? To create some baseline insights, I developed an 11-question checklist to assess IBP decision centricity. Based on this checklist I … Continue reading Key Elements of Decision Centricity in Effective IBP Processes

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
decision intelligence, Digital supply chain, S&OP

Invite AI to the Table for your next IBP Meeting

In his book Co-Intelligence, Ethan Mollick suggests firstly to invite AI to the table in everything you do. And secondly to make sure to be the human in the loop that works with AI. Working with AI/GenAI is a skill that can be developed. Prompting GenAI certainly takes practice and Mollick provides some interesting and well thought through prompt examples. If you’re an IBP manager … Continue reading Invite AI to the Table for your next IBP Meeting

Unknown's avatarNiels1 Comment
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

Unknown's avatarNiels1 Comment
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

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
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

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
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

Unknown's avatarNielsLeave a comment
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

Unknown's avatarNiels1 Comment