ABSTRACT
This chapter shows why sales and operations planning (S&OP) is an important tool to ensure business to deliver on time and in full to its customers. It helps how to develop simple tools for understanding production capacity. The chapter discusses the difference between cycle time and takt time and why it matters for capacity planning and the importance of understanding the capacity of their bottleneck. It explains the basics of implementing a sales and operations planning process in business and the key elements of a sales and operations planning process. The chapter explores how to set up a simple sales and operations planning process in business. It identifies some fundamental aspects of your supply chain, including the idea of matching your output to the rate of customer demand or takt time. The chapter proposes that a rudimentary S&OP process is one of the basic elements of getting the supply chain right.
