Santa’s Supply Chain Issues

We are all well aware of the tough job Santa has! All the last-minute orders, late delivery of the toy makers and popular gadgets, and then deal with the returns? He has done this so many times before, will it be different this year? Does inflation impact demand, will he overstock items ending in too much inventory or simply not enough to deliver on time? will there be shipment delays from China and Vietnam for all those toys and clothes?

Just not too long ago, Santa implemented a S&OP solution that was supposed to help him to forecast demand and plan deliveries as well as reduce inventory. Santa was so happy until he realized that this kind of solution can only deliver plans that are 3 months out and beyond! Whereas Santa’s problems were rush orders, next week deliveries and breakdown of production and his sub-contractors’ late deliveries. He keeps getting all these messages and alerts and he really does not have the time to manually change the execution day-in day-out just to make the plans work. Perhaps S&OP can help for next year, but what do I do now and how can I plan and execute for today, this week, and this month, when every little child is waiting for their toys?

While Santa was thinking about this, he gets a real-time message from Carrier44. Three of his containers coming from Shanghai and Mexico are going to be late and one of his suppliers in Indonesia just got flooded. Not a good day for Santa! He was thinking to himself, “thanks for the message but what am I supposed to do, what options do I have, what are the alternatives, who has the answer to all of this?” Receiving messages and alerts are nice but one needs to have the speed and intelligence to deal with potentially hundreds of messages and choose amongst thousands of different items, and capacity availabilities. Quick decisions need to be made regarding re-routing, using alternative suppliers, changing shifts, using substitute items, re-prioritizing demands and so on. In the absence of the right system, not even Santa can handle this, let alone the rest of us mortals!

Santa was desperate and called his S&OP supplier. He was disappointed to hear that they really have no understanding or visibility into the current operations, other than planning at a very high level and even that is for the future. Poor Santa was sad, he sat down and wondering what to do, where to go for help.

One of Santa’s helpers who specialized in supply chain saw Santa’s sad face and asked him what is the problem? Santa explained. He said, “my dear Santa, worry no more.” Your issues can easily be solved by a system that performs not just S&OP but also S&OE and respond to events in real-time. It is intelligent enough to know what the options are and makes immediate recommendations in operations and performs planning so accurately that no manual intervention is necessary in order to execute the plan and deliver on-time.

Santa was so happy to hear that. He immediately said where do I get this system? The helper responded just click Here and all your problems will vanish like magic!