Patrick Bower is Senior Director of Corporate Planning at Combe Incorporated, the makers of Just for Men, Odor Eaters, other OTC brands. “With the improvements in supply chain computing platforms, I believe we are close to a transition point with S&OP”, says Bower.
Prior to this experience, Pat worked as a Practice Manager for Supply Chain Planning at a boutique supply chain consulting company, as a Director of Demand Planning, Strategy and S&OP at Snapple / Cadbury Beverages, and has extensive supply chain supply chain systems background.Bower frequently write articles on the subjects of demand planning, production planning, S&OP and speaks at conferences on S&OP and demand planning topics. He is the architect of a patent pending demand planning software tool – known as a demand curve analyzer and has provided strategic supply chain consulting and training to a number of clients including GSK, Bayer, Diageo, Pfizer, Tasty Kake, and American Girl among others.
In an interview with 21st Century Supply Chain, he gave his vision on S&OP. “In my thinking, best practice S&OP should utilize a summary plan built up from rational and feasible lower level plans”, says Bower. “Many people treat S&OP as a top down process – and certainly traditional thinking on S&OP was much more top down and monolithic.”
“Yet in common practice, and using best of breed tools, the 'hard work' in demand planning, supply balancing, and portfolio management can easily being rolled up into summary plans and presented to the senior management team for approval. These rational and feasible rolled up plans (or alternatives of plans) are presented during the Pre-S&OP process for potential escalation to the Executive level meeting – but they are mostly vetted and evaluated prior to presentation.”