Your Boss the supply chain manager is coming back from a C-levelmeeting and is in a quite bad mood. The sales director was beatingon him that the total performance towards their customers isgetting worth every month. Beside the fact that your on-timedelivery rate was going down the last couple of month, your financedirector was beating on your supply chain manager as well due tothe high stock levels and increase in manufacturing expenses. Afirst analysis shows that both are right. To overcome this issue,the supply chain manager asks you to set up an operationsimprovement project which is covering all three BUs, Jake’s, Finnand Exotic. He asks you especially to provide the followinginformation:

1. Consider to set up a sales & operation planning(S&OP) improvement project. Provide the key theoreticalbackground for an S&OP project. In addition prepare an actionplan for improving Williamson’s S&OP process. Consider to drawsome recommendations out of your supply chain analysis in theprevious section to improve the S&OP process

2. In addition to the issues with the S&OP process it getsobvious that the way how your key plant in Buxtehude is producingis no longer appropriate. Consider to set up a lean initiative andlay out the program accordingly.

Explain the operations and manufacturing area. Here you areasked to provide an S&OP process as well as planning a projectfor introducing lean manufacturing principles.