Planning meets execution

By Gary Forger, Editorial Director -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/1/2004

The other day my wife found a great article in The New York Times. It was about a Web site that posts grocery lists. Now these are scans of actual lists posted for the world to see at www.grocerylists.org.

So I read through some of them (reading all 550 was beyond me). Here are three of my favorites, misspellings and all:

– Floss picks, Oral B refills, Ketchup, Nuts, Bourbin

–Miracle Whip, buns, brats, sauerkraut, milk, eggs

–Cherrios, long envelopes

I'm sure that if you visit the site, you'll find your own favorites. And as you read through them, it will probably strike you how random they are. I'm still trying to decide if the ketchup was for the nuts in the first list, or the Miracle Whip for the brats in the second. I am quite sure, however, there's no link between Cheerios and long envelopes.

But like it or not, this is how all of us plan our food purchases. Of the 100 or so lists that I read, most were short and about immediate needs.

In other words, planning and execution are linked quite tightly here. Now I couldn't help but think of that when I read a piece Editor at Large Bob Trebilcock just wrote for our Software Alert e-newsletter (register at www.enews.mmh.com to receive future editions of this free newsletter). He called it "Demand meets Execution."

In it, Trebilcock says that for the first time, planning functionality is becoming a part of software execution packages.

By integrating execution systems with planning systems, says Karin Bursa, vice president of marketing at Logility, a company can re-plan and react to changes in demand. "If I get a change in demand, I can look across my inventory and transportation systems to see if I can bring together the supply to fill an order in a shorter time frame," says Bursa.

Or as Scott Pulsipher, Yantra's vice president of product management, says in the piece, these systems offer "the opportunity to synchronize actual demand with actual inventory and actual constraints."

Interestingly enough, others are on a similar path. At Mitsubishi Motors (Mitsubishi stamps out inefficiencies, Nov., 2004), an upgrade of an automatic guided vehicle system at its Normal, Ill. stamping plant is the first step to better planning. Ultimately, the company will tie together databases linked to its AGVS, automated storage, presses and scrap monitoring systems. That will enable real-time scheduling of exactly what needs to be produced and when.

So the next time you consider how to better link planning and execution in the plant or warehouse, think about it as your bread and milk list.