Optimize supply chain inventory levels with planning collaboration

Get early visibility into supply availability by aligning with your trading partners on supply and demand planning and commitments over multiple time horizons. Gain full visibility into availability of supply across the planning horizon with the SAP Business Network Planning Collaboration solution. You and your trading partners can identify and address demand shifts and agree on material requirements

• Shared forecast and demand plans between buyers and suppliers
• Common view of inventory levels for buyers and suppliers
• Full visibility of trading partner commitments to demand plans
• Customer alert for timely mitigation

Key benefits

Improve supply planning

Reduce latency and improve quality of demand and supply signals that are critical inputs to net requirements planning calculations.

Reduce lead times

Cut planning cycles and overall product lead time with a responsive, process-driven workflow.

Assure supply and delivery

Improve assurance of supply upstream in the supply chain, allowing for more complete and reliable delivery to downstream customers.

Key features

Forecast visibility

• Provide trading partners with forecast visibility through a common view for real-time orchestration of supply plans
• Receive custom alerts that inform you about supply commitments, enabling you to take mitigating actions earlier
• Share forecasts digitally that originate in your planning systems with your trading partners

Component planning collaboration

• Drive real-time visibility for finished goods and components with a single planning view, including multitier trading partners
• Anticipate disruptions with digital collaboration across production, yield, and consumption of goods for manufacturing
• Foster supply chain efficiency through smooth collaboration across OEMs, contract manufacturers, and multitier suppliers

External manufacturing visibility

• Equip your organization to work with multiple tiers of contract manufacturers and suppliers across supply chain planning processes
• Obtain reports from trading partners on stock-on-hand quantities to better manage strategic components and proactively detect supply disruptions
• Reduce component and material waste through more effective inventory management

Forecast commit

• Gain visibility of trading partner commitments to optimize your constrained supply plan
• Enable trading partners to fully or partially commit to the volume in each time bucket

Supply chain monitoring

• Uncover potential problem areas in your supply chain, such as forecasts where your trading partners cannot fully commit to your anticipated demand
• Optimize your supply plan to move uncommitted volume to a secondary supply source

Reporting

• Receive reports about stock on hand and other key information
• Get reports about supplier component manufacturing quantities, providing visibility into the manufacturing process and enabling detection of supply disruptions