19/09/2017

Implementation of the S&OP: Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference

Narcis Vidal Sanz, Supply Chain Director at ELIX Polymers was invited to speak at the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference, held on the 20^th and 21^st of September in London.

Narcis talked about the Implementation of the Sales and Operation (S&OP) process in ELIX and how this has led to a sustained improvement in their performance. ELIX was also the subject of a case study by Gartner on embracing the S&OP process.

ELIX started working with Gartner in 2014 as part of their business strategy to continuously improve and strengthen the end to end Supply Chain. As part of this plan a decision was made to fully implement the S&OP Process to achieve further gains in maturity. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is an iterative business management process, enabling trade-offs to be made allowing a company to make good business decisions. The process is built upon stakeholder agreement and an approved consensus plan.

In 2015 the company began to fully deploy S&OP practices, in an initial phase concentrating on forecasting at 3-month intervals. Over the following months new opportunities were identified to continually improve the process, all of which were successfully implemented and have been advantageous for the company.

Narcis Vidal, Supply Chain Director at ELIX led the deployment of the initiative and commented that “The successful adoption of the S&OP process has been extremely beneficial for ELIX, allowing us to use our capacity more astutely and reduce lead times for our customers, in addition to many other financial advantages.”

In fact, the results have been so positive that in 2016 ELIX was awarded the “Best Implementation of Transformational Initiative” by their owners, Sun Capital, and they use the company as a reference point for other businesses in their portfolio.

According to Vidal, “Initially, it was difficult for everyone to adopt to such a disciplined and structured process, but now it forms part of our DNA.”

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