One of the challenges I have seen across many manufacturing companies is trying to manage a customer’s changing priorities outside of the purchase orders they have placed with us.
We build to the customer’s purchase order dates but almost every month, especially towards the end of the month, they will tell us that they need X amount of part ABC and X amount of part DEF, both of which we have existing sales order to represent the original demand, ahead of the dates they have given us.
One of the challenges is that the products we build for them have several shared part numbers. We manage shortages based on the demand schedule fairly well but when this type of request is made, we need to see where we can “rob Peter to pay Paul” and then see the total impact on the rest of the demand.
Currently, the teams here are taking data dumps and building elaborate Excel spreadsheets but I am confident this can be better managed in Kinetic.
While I have some ideas, I was looking for feedback on how others manage their ever changing customer priorities.
This is an issue/problem/nightmare at every single B2B manufacturer I’ve ever visited. It seems to be most acute when the customer is publicly traded and MUST meet their own numbers… and can be just as bad internally if YOU are publicly traded and have to ship (and invoice) everything that isn’t nailed to the floor to meet YOUR numbers.
The way to maintain one’s sanity during this repeating frenetic end-of-month cycle is different every month, since there’s a different mix of Peters and parts (usually the Pauls are the same). All I’ve ever been able to do is create dashboards with open orders, dates, and current production so that the various folks can get together and arm wrestle.
