INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING FOR AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING DATA SHEET
Steelwedge Integrated Business Planningfor Automotive Manufacturing
Your company must be able to better connect with suppliers and respond to changing regional and global customer demand to remain successful.
Leading Information Technology research and consultancy, Gartner, summarized in its 2011 Top Supply Chain 25 report:
To respond, automotive companies need a deep understanding of customer demand to maximize assets and �nished goods inventory. By rethinking existing, siloed processes and developing new ones that anticipate demand, companies are able to react more quickly to the unexpected. This results in high inventory turns and lowered lead-times from order to delivery.
Role of Integrated Business Planning in Automotive
Automotive Demand, Supply and Product Characteristics
DEMAND SUPPLY PRODUCT
Long lead-time operations
Assembly line manufacturing
Built-to-Order & Built- to-Stock
Highly configured products with a mix of large multi-level BOM and SKU-level, simple products
Statistical forecasting at SKU level has limited application. Requires attach rate forecasting
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Automotive manufacturers are faced with complicated supply and demand planning challenges—from customizable order options to expanding sales lines to high levels of competition. In just the past 3 years, manufacturers have been forced to balance between these pressures in a variety of ways:
Emerging countries—especially China, Brazil and India had rampant double digit growth North America rebounded from the extremely dif�cult conditions from 2008-2010 but showed continued exposure to market volatility The tsunami and earthquake in Japan and the �oods in Taiwan posed major challenges to the supply chainChanging demographics in Europe and North America driving preference for sustainable products and increased demand for battery powered vehicles
The right planning creates a medium-to-long-term volume program plan based on: top-down �nancial budget considerations, global capacity, material restrictions and customer demand.
Using an integrated technology that provides insight into multiple data sources, you can:
Manage a global �nancial budget tied to sales numbers, revenues and operational forecasts Model dealer hierarchy and perform allocation of supply across various levels of the hierarchyForecast and plan at a vehicle option level instead of only at product family model level(lower level of granularity)Perform option attach-rate forecasting (statistical bill of materials)Allocate capacity and raw materials across multiple suppliers based on overall capacity utilization and overall pro�tsModel lead times associated with transportation, tooling, manufacturing as part of the long term capacity planning
”“ Organizations seeking industry leadership must establish demand-driven business excellence and agile value networks that emphasize supplier-partner collaboration, and achieve process optimization.
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Steelwedge Software, Inc.
Steelwedge integrated sales, operations and �nance planning solutions provide the "shock absorbers" to recognize, recalibrate and respond in a volatile environment. Business agility starts with Steelwedge for a clear line of sight from plan to performance to pro�t. For additional information, please email us: [email protected].
INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING FOR AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING DATA SHEET
Steelwedge Advantages for Automotive Manufacturers
For the Sales Team:
Enable collaborative forecasting for sales reps and sales management
Power plans at any level of detail
Integrate with sales pipeline from CRM to support opportunity management
Provide annual operating plan (AOP) visibility as part of S&OP process
View cross-functional demand plans (sales, marketing, product management, etc.)
For the Product Management Team:
Develop attach-rate forecasts to drive mix forecasting for complex automotive products and
key components.
Forecast using region- or dealer-speci�c terms, such as customer speci�c product packages,
while aggregating independent and dependent demand for products and components.
For the Planning Team:
Drive company speci�c planning processes with One-Click Planning™ alert-driven work�ow
Provide planning process visibility and progress reporting
Drive assigned or exception-based review policies
Integrate with ERP, SCM, CRM and �nancial systems that widely differ in their taxonomy
or granularity
Establish role-speci�c planning views, automatic semantic resolution, parent analysis and
user driven catalogs
For the Executive Team:
Consolidate supply, demand and �nance hierarchies into one comprehensive model
Enable more detailed planning assumptions via relationship attributes
(e.g., customer speci�c pricing, source speci�c costing)
Best Practice Spotlight: European Automotive Manufacturer
A large, global luxury car manufacturer is currently experiencing high growth across their two major brands but the company wasn’t maximizing the success through a single S&OP process. Their sales forecasting—which incorporated dealer/importer forecasts, regional and market forecasts, production forecasts, and more—were each created independently and were not reconciled with the top-down �nance projections. The forecasts were also performed at different planning levels. For example, the production forecast was managed at the plant level while the sales and market forecasts were planned regionally, around the world.The company explored a variety of solution providers but only one, Steelwedge, could solve the unique challenges associated with the automotive industry. Using Steelwedge’s integrated S&OP platform, the company can:
Optimize the allocation of production to markets, centrally and/or regionally.
Develop collaborative forecasting to achieve a consensus operations strategy and plan.
Integrate third parties, such as importers, dealers and suppliers,
into a common planning process.
Monitor key metrics and automatically produce company-speci�c reports.
Leverage investment in existing systems of record; acting as a system of differentiation.