Damon Sidell — Demand Manager
As ACME's demand manager, Damon focuses on meeting customer requirements by recognizing
marketplace opportunities and the need for ACME goods and services. Thoughts of
demand
management, demand planning and forecasting, perfect order fulfillment, and optimal
demand response fill
Damon's head…along with happy daydreams about his next meal. A lovable slob, Damon
works alongside his wife Sibley at ACME, and the two often butt heads over their opposing
work styles and goals. For Damon, pleasing and retaining customers comes first, so he does
whatever it takes to ensure that happens — often at the expense of profitability.
Details seem less important than the need to keep customer commitments and sell the latest
and greatest products the moment they hit the shelf. If old inventory needs to be scrapped,
so be it. However, Damon's maneuvers to "work miracles" for customers frequently fail to
take the whole picture into account — wreaking havoc for Sibley and the ACME bottom
line.
ACME's reliance on spreadsheets, emails, and post-it notes to handle
sales
and operations planning (S&OP) proves woefully inadequate for Damon. His
lengthy, carefully taped-together spreadsheets are often outdated by the time he prints
them. As a result, important supply requirements slip through the cracks (especially since
he's also lax about updating Sibley on changes due to reengineering and new product
introductions). For Damon, easy-to-use software that lets him align customer demands with
inventory planning and control is crucial. He also needs a fast, simple way to analyze and
relay market opportunities across the ACME supply chain — allowing everyone involved
to assess the impact of potential changes and choose the best action alternatives.
Sibley Sidell — Supply Manager
Organized and conscientious, Sibley is ACME Manufacturing's supply manager and Damon's
adoring spouse. She spends her days dealing with a wide range of
supply
management issues, including ordering, purchasing, inventory replenishment and
management, planning, and forecasting. Sibley's boss Hank instructs her to strive for just-
in-time inventory control and a
lean
supply chain to help reduce inventory and protect margins. But ACME's lack of an
effective inventory system — or even any type of
inventory
management software — makes this goal virtually unattainable even for
responsible, results-oriented Sibley. Last-minute changes in supply, demand, and product
create all kinds of problems for her — with sometimes hilarious results!
For example,
new product
introductions in Europe require shifts in supply components, but Sibley needs to use old
inventory up first. Trying to tightly manage rollout of new items will mean riding herd on
Damon, whose desire to please customers first and foremost runs head-on into Sibley's need
to shrink margins. Poor
supply
chain visibility and nonexistent
supplier collaboration
complicate Sibley's situation even more, with the complex path of components and services
between ACME and its overseas CMs and suppliers driving up costs and production time.
Collaborative demand-supply planning, monitoring, and response capabilities would save the
day for Sibley by providing the real-time visibility and interactive capabilities she needs
to effectively manage the supply side while meeting company goals.
Jimmy — Inventory Manager
Jimmy is an hourly employee who's now on his way to a shiny new position in the front
office. When we first meet him, however, Jimmy works in the warehouse on
inventory
management. His role is to manage, track, audit, report on, and distribute
inventory for ACME to help keep the
supply chain
running smoothly. A key part of Jimmy's job involves inventory control and optimization
— ensuring that inventory items are correctly identified and readily accessible at all
times so the order processing department can pull a high volume of items quickly whenever
needed. This requires careful planning to avoid problems like late shipments and paying rush
fees on supplies.
However, ACME's lack of an effective inventory management software solution creates endless
problems for Jimmy. Accurate and timely inventory reporting for the main warehouse is
challenging enough, but with the company's many outside warehouse locations thrown into the
mix, the task becomes almost impossible. As a result, Jimmy spends most of his time in
reactive mode — trying to put out fires that result from missing, incorrectly coded,
or insufficient levels of inventory (not to mention components that suddenly disappear into
the sewer grate!). Like Sibley, Damon, and Hank, Jimmy could transform his efficiency if he
had better tools. A collaborative demand-supply planning, monitoring, and response solution
would make it easy for him to accurately keep tabs on ACME's constantly changing inventory,
not only internally but across its global supply chain. Fortunately for Jimmy, upper
management hasn't noticed his ineptitude or the occasional mysterious inventory gaps that
occur, so his promotion seems assured…at least for now.
Hank — Director of Supply Chain
A bit higher up on the ACME food chain, the affable yet clueless Hank handles the company's
global supply
chain management (SCM) process. Hank's job requires him to manage key business
activities across the network of organizations that comprise the ACME supply chain,
including purchasing, logistics,
materials
management, and customer service. This brings him into regular contact with
manufacturing, purchasing, plant managers, supply chain managers, business unit directors,
sales and marketing, outside vendors, international colleagues, customers, and IT…as
well as Damon and Sibley, whom he supervises.
Hank's goal is to drive supply chain optimization by identifying and implementing the most
efficient supply chain planning solutions. Unfortunately, he seems unaware that ACME's
supply chain management system needs a complete overhaul. Sibley and Damon's hodgepodge
efforts to meet the contradictory goals he sets for each of them also escape his notice. He
asks Damon to focus on better
customer
service and higher sales, yet at the same time tells
Sibley to improve inventory efficiency and better manage shrinking margins. Clearly, what
Hank needs goes beyond traditional supply chain management software. Collaborative demand-
supply planning, monitoring, and response capabilities offers the
comprehensive
supply chain visibility and collaborative "what-if" assessment of multiple
action alternatives needed to solve ACME's problems — allowing Sibley and Damon as
well as other supply chain participants to effectively respond to constant last-minute
changes.
Ms. Tinley — VP Operations
As vice president of operations, Ms. Tinley strives to improve ACME's
operations
performance in ways that drive overall company growth. She oversees corporate
performance management in a wide range of strategic areas, including supply chain and
distribution management, cost reduction, client interaction, production and materials
planning, process improvement, team-building and supervision, and process optimization. Ms.
Tinley's emphasis on lean manufacturing combined with her knowledge of
lean Six
Sigma techniques helps her create an atmosphere at ACME focused on reducing waste,
cutting costs, minimizing inventory, and optimizing process efficiency. At the same time,
she keeps an eagle eye out for ways to increase value-added activities that promote higher
quality, faster delivery, and greater customer satisfaction.
However, Ms. Tinley's ill-advised promotion of the hapless Jimmy reveals her lack of insight
into what — and who — really adds value to ACME's bottom line. Though
performance monitoring is part of her job, she doesn't have the right tools to accurately
assess the efficiency of the warehouse inventory system…or any other strategic area
she oversees. A collaborative demand-supply planning, monitoring, and response solution
could help Ms. Tinley instantly gain the capabilities and "shared vision of the truth" she
needs to rapidly resolve problems and establish a culture of continuous improvement across
the entire ACME organization.
