At a recent Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) conference, I was given an introduction into the planning challenges facing a company in a very dynamic market. Imagine a product where geographic boom and bust cycles regularly take place, you have to satisfy dozens of retail channels but one customer constitutes 40% of all North American volume, you need to come up with a completely new product incorporating new, green, high-tech materials every 12 months and you outsource all of your manufacturing and distribution.
So, what comes to mind? Cell phones? Nope. Running shoes? Think again. It’s actually the disposable diaper market. Like electronics, there is constant pressure to introduce new products that perform better and can be made more cheaply than their predecessors. Think that diapers are lightweight in terms of product complexity? The Huggies Ultratrim alone is protected by over two hundred patents. Introducing a new ‘chassis’ (the main body of the diaper that receives what those in the trade delicately refer to as ‘the insult’) that can perform properly and measure no more than seven by thirteen inches mean diapers are a modern engineering marvel. So, move over iPhone and Blackberry; when thinking dynamic, think diapers!
Bob May is a Product Manager for Kinaxis, provider of the on-demand RapidResponse service that empowers multi-enterprise manufacturers with the collaborative and integrated demand-supply planning, monitoring, and response capabilities.
Supply chain volatility effects all types of products
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