By Rod Hozack, Partner at Oliver Wight Asia Pacific
Is there a sequence of steps to make the ITP process work? Integrated Tactical Planning operates through the quorum of people/roles, all the time – everyday, every hour. It is important, however, to conduct a weekly review of the regenerated plans, and formally agree that the recast plans that stem out of the changes that have occurred during the week are valid and doable.
While all business environments are different, the generic flow for this weekly meeting might look like this:
1. Key issues to be resolved at this week’s meeting
2. How did we do last week?
- Demand variance to forecast
- Portfolio changes to plan
- Supply schedule attainment
- Supply delivery
- How close to the monthly signed-off plans
- Data integrity misses
3. How are plans going this week?
4. Significant demand variance implications on next week and out to the planning time fence
5. Significant impacts on the supply plan next week and out to the planning time fence
6. Agreement on the daily supply schedule for the next two weeks
7. Agreement on the rough-cut capacity plans out to the planning time fence
8. Progress with significant initiatives – value engineering, new product launches, etc
9. Agree that core plans are doable with the knowledge we have to date
10. Hedging and flexibility plans
11. Minutes
12. Critique
To make this work, it is important to formally map each step and activity in the preparation cycle.
The SIPOC
The next step is to define the SIPOC (supplier of input to a process with outputs going to a customer) for what happens, by whom, every day, to continue the weekly cycle.
Daily Review Meeting
The final step is to define the daily meetings, which are usually site- or facility-based. Their purpose is to maintain the ability to supply to the agreed weekly supply plan. A daily meeting closes the loop and ensures that all levels of the process are continually synchronized. An example of a daily meeting agenda is:
- How did we do yesterday?
- What is on for today?
- Any issues with doing the plan for tomorrow?
- Will we meet the weekly plan as agreed at last weeks Integrated Tactical Planning meeting?
- What is to be escalated and to whom?
This meeting should be no more than 15 minutes and may contain other items, such as safety performance. The important part is that it is about plans and performance, not just about performance, as occurs in most organizations.
Conclusion
As we started, if your monthly Integrated Business Planning process is not delivering all you think it could, then it may be lacking integrity in what is being done week to week, day to day. Integrated Tactical Planning formalizes the weekly and daily execution processes, and aligns them with goals signed off in the Integrated Business Planning cycle. Thus, key operational metrics always see a stepwise improvement, and time is always released for people to spend on longer-term activities, so both long-term and short-term business goals can be achieved.