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
The IBP paradigm has hardly changed for 30 years, the decision needle has not moved enough. We’ve entered an AI era where 74% of work can be augmented or automated and 26% eliminated. Planning will not be excluded from this evolution. However, only 3% of companies apply automated execution and 7% autonomous end to end planning. 2% of managers apply best practice decision methods. Hardly … Continue reading The Intelligent IBP Manifesto – 50 principles for a new planning paradigm
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be at the center of value creation in the future enterprise. It has the potential to augment and automate both physical labor and the knowledge worker. AI powered cognitive and decision automation has the potential to make ordinary knowledge workers into super humans leading to superior performance, triumphing over human genius and activity alone. However, enterprises should not focus on artificial … Continue reading Seven reasons why Artificial Intelligence can’t drive business value alone
This article is my commentary on an article published in Foresight, written by the authors of the book Humachine: Humankind, Machines, and the Future of Enterprise (Sanders & Wood, 2020). For the original Foresight article and other commentary, you can go here. INTRODUCTION: A NEW ERA The authors of The Humachine make a valid point that enterprises should not focus on artificial intelligence (AI) alone … Continue reading AI Is Here to Automate the Knowledge Worker!
An interview on Autonomous Planning with Niels van Hove I recently got interviewed by Bethanie Maples about my Foresight article; ‘Autonomous or Lights out Planning, what’s really required?’ Bethanie is an AI and human cognition expert, does research at Standford University and is advisor to many entrepreneurs. I explain how we have to make the leap forward from Wave 1 (ERP) and Wave 2 (APS) … Continue reading Achieving Autonomous Supply Chain Planning; an expert interview
A common IBP cycle has a monthly cadence providing an – up to 24 months – forward view of a business. It is often supported by a weekly control cycle, sometimes called Sales & Operations Execution (S&OE). This cycle plans demand & supply in more detail and over a shorter horizon, often around 12 weeks. IBP is data and resource hungry. Planners spend up to … Continue reading Why Cognitive Automation makes IBP more Agile and more Strategic
Preview In his 2019 Foresight article, Niels van Hove examined eight technological hurdles that must be overcome to enable autonomous or ‘lights out’ supply-chain planning. He reasoned that to support such planning we need to implement a third wave of integrated supply-chain planning software. In this article, Niels argues that these technological advances can lead to either (a) planning-process and decision automation or (b) planning … Continue reading Technology Support in Integrated Business Planning: Automation, Augmentation and Human Centricity
If you operate in the supply chain or the planning world, it is hard to not come across terminology like supply chain planning 4.0, ‘light touch’ planning or ‘lights out’ planning. They all rate high in the hype cycle and for good reasons. A lot of technology progress has been made in recent years, and progress continuous at dizzying speed. Autonomous vehicles already exist in … Continue reading Autonomous or ‘Lights Out’ Supply Chain Planning; what is really required?
In our household we love our Google Home. My girls use it continuously to play music, ask silly questions, jokes, do calculations and spell difficult words amongst other things. I use it to voice command my shopping list, set a timer and book meetings in my agenda. Speeking to and interacting with a little machine in my living room, that has the capacity to both … Continue reading Artificial Intelligence – beyond the hype, the experts, its weak spots and losing your job
In a bit of an attention-grabbing title – The Death of Supply Chain Management – some pretty well-established supply chain people got away in the Harvard Business Review with what reads pretty much as a one dimensional sales pitch for technology. The main premise of the article is that technology and digitalisation will take over the supply chain and take peoples jobs. They talk about … Continue reading The self-driving supply chain will need human capability more than ever
Supply Chain Trend 