Why ”the grumpy old man” might be your supply chain transformation’s secret weapon

The reality is that supply chain planning isn’t just about algorithms and automation. It’s about understanding the interplay between market dynamics, supplier relationships, and operational constraints. This is where your experienced planners shine.

Take the case of critical component management. While an AI-driven system might see all components as equal, your veteran planner knows which parts can bring your production to a grinding halt if they run out. This knowledge, built over years of hands-on experience, isn’t something you can easily replicate in a system – unless you know exactly what to look for.

”When we implement planning excellence initiatives, the key is finding out what’s truly a business necessity versus what’s just an old habit,” explains Benjamin Obling, Chief Operations Officer at PERITO IBP in Roima. ”Sometimes, what looks like resistance is actually a crucial insight into your business’s unique requirements.”

The challenge lies in separating valuable insights from outdated practices. Here’s where strategic listening becomes crucial:

• Look for patterns in feedback that highlight specific business impacts
• Pay attention to examples of past failures and their root causes
• Focus on input that addresses risk mitigation and customer satisfaction
• Consider feedback that points to unique market or operational constraints

”What is bad habits and what are real business needs? That’s really the element that is super tricky when you have the workshops working with the processes, with the planning tools – then how do we optimize the supply chain planning?” Obling says, and continues:

”The grumpy old man or woman in the corner, they have seen a lot. Having respect for that, that they say it for a reason... Sometimes they need to be pushed a bit, other times, we need to listen carefully.”

The real magic happens when you can successfully bridge the gap between experience and innovation. This isn’t about choosing between automation and human insight – it’s really about leveraging both.

In one case, we’ve had at PERITO IBP, a German sales team’s forecast needed adjustments.

While the system showed consistent overestimation, the solution wasn’t to simply override human input. Instead, the key was understanding the underlying concerns, i.e. service levels for new customers, and building that intelligence into the automated system.

If you push them a bit, your experienced planners will know what SKU’s are important to service levels, and which are not. This insight is hard to get from looking at the old system alone. But knowing what’s important allows you to keep a good safety stock on critical components, while saving warehouse space and freeing working capital by lessening the stock levels on non-essential items.

The road to planning excellence requires a keeping a hard balance between old planning knowledge and challenging that knowledge with new databased insigths.

Here’s how to make it work:

1. Involve experienced staff early in process design
   Create opportunities for them to share their knowledge before decisions are made

2. Document tribal knowledge systematically
   Transform individual insights into structured business rules
   
   
3. Create validation frameworks
   Use experienced staff to verify that automated systems capture crucial business logic

4. Maintain feedback loops
   Ensure continuous improvement by regularly reviewing system performance against experienced insights

When we set up business logics and decision tree rules, the planning system will do the same every time.

That means that we can try to improve it, test it, and then find flaws in the setup. We’ll then improve a bit again, and unlike human planners, the system will remember everything from before, as well as the newly implemented improvements. In that way, we can continuously build a stronger and better planning system.

Before setting of to a company wide S&OP transformation project, remember: the goal isn’t to replace human experience with automation, but to strengthen automated planning with human insight.

Your veterans’ knowledge, when properly captured and systematized, becomes the foundation for truly excellent planning processes, and as you begin your planning transformation journey, that skeptical voice in the corner might just be your best guide to lasting success.

The key is to create an environment where experience and innovation can coexist and amplify each other. After all, the grumpy old man have already seen a lot, and the forward-thinking planning lead have best listening to that experience. Your experienced planners aren’t obstacles to transformation – they’re the key to getting it right.