Sales and Operations Planning
The sales-and-operations-planning process is used by many companies to coordinate efforts of different functional units, including Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Operations, for medium-term supply-chain planning. SOP is mainly about sales-driven forecasting and consolidating and uses neutral figures in contrast to MRP/CRP. The forecast of demand, being at the very beginning of the supply chain, has a huge impact on the company's costs. That is why the high accuracy of the demand forecast is the key to the absence of losses throughout the supply chain and one of the most important tasks for the optimal operation of the company as a whole. This process entails two main stages: Demand Planning to determine the supply requirement, and Supply planning to meet these supply requirements. Sales and Operations Planning is one of the levels of Supply Chain Planning: Profit plan Sales & Operations Planning Master production schedule Material planning Factory pla...