Education and Training Courses 2008

To support Supply Chain Management including Selection of Planning and Control Methods, Inventory Modelling, Forecasting, Warehouse Management, and applying lean and agile thinking to supply chain management

Our Training Philosophy and Approach

The following 9 training courses (indexed to details below) are available. They can be readily tailored to suit individual requirements for in-house workshops.

To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us.

More Best Practice and Training Links below

Supply Chain Management Course Summaries

SSC01 Tools, Techniques & Modern Trends In Supply Chain Management (1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for managers and senior planners, responsible for supply chain management, demand management, production planning, purchase planning, or stock control, this course provides 16 tools & techniques for understanding, resolving the issues, designing and implementing better supply chain management processes & an appraisal of modern trends in supply chain management. It will enable you to answer the following questions:

• How do you analyse your supply chain from your customer's viewpoint?
• How do you analyse inventory and capacity to devise a better supply chain management strategy?
• How do you decide what your manufacturing, supply, and stock strategy should be?
  • Variation in the supply chain, affect on manufacturing strategy, use of safety stock?
  • Lead-time reduction?
  • Make verses Buy?
  • Batch size?
• What are the ten essential ingredients of adding value?
• What are the six essential ingredients of control systems?
• What are the recent trends and innovations in managing supply chains?
• How do you improve supply chain performance? What techniques are available?
• How do you communicate effectively with suppliers?
• How can IT contribute to supply chain performance?
• How do you turn your supply chain into a supply train and avoid the "Forrester effect" (the agile approach)?

SSC02 Materials Control Process Selection (1 day) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for  Planning & Control systems designers, implementation project teams and supply chain management or materials management personnel, and anyone wishing an appreciation of the control systems options available, this course describes the material planning and control systems available and their strengths and weaknesses: (MRP1, MRP2, Kanban, Re-order Point, 2 Bin, Period Batch Control, Replacement, Top up point of use, Consignment stock, Off-site warehousing, 3rd Party Kitting, Milk-round, All time Buy Etc.). The course will enable you to answer the following questions:

• What planning and control processes are available?
• What are their key features?
• What are their strengths and weakness?
• Which are appropriate in your circumstances?

SSC03 Inventory Modelling using Spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel®) (2 days) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for  Supply Chain systems designers and implementation project teams; managers wishing to improve supply chain performance, all levels of Demand management / Planning / Inventory management and Purchasing staff with responsibility for supply chain performance, customer service, or inventory levels, this detailed hands-on course, using MS Excel® spreadsheets, provides a complete tool kit to analyse your supply chain, predict demand & to deal with variability. It will enable you to: forecast more accurately; analyse your supply chain; size stock requirements within it; determine safety stock, batch sizes and inventory levels; to maximise output and service levels; minimise inventory and create an action checklist as a basis for improving supply chain performance.

The course will enable you to design your own inventory simulation model to evaluate your proposals, and simulate changes for up to 45,000 stock items. (One of our course participants simultaneously reduced shortages by a factor of 10 and inventory value by 10% simultaneously within 14 weeks!) It will also answer the following questions:

Module 1 (Day 1) The Basics (Can be ordered separately)

• How can this all be done in Excel with integrity, and what are the problems of using inventory modelling tools?
• What are the problems of forecasting from historical data?
• How do you improve the quality of forecasts and detect suspect information in historical data?
• How do you deal with variation?
• What are appropriate stock levels, batch sizes, & Reorder Points (ROP) / reorder levels (ROL)?
• How do you evaluate proposed changes to your batch sizes, safety stocks, and re-order levels to determine the effect on, Inventory, Service levels, Set-ups / volume of purchase orders raised / deliveries and output, before you implement them?
• How do you design a robust but simple model which is part of strategic inventory management process?
• What are the attributes of a good model
• Useful, useless and dangerous formulae?

Module 2 (Day 2) Advanced

• What are the weaknesses of the classic ROP formula for safety stock and reorder point and how do you improve on it?
• How do you further improve the quality of forecasting and focus your attention on the items which are difficult to forecast?
• How do you forecast low volume or irregular demands more accurately?
• What is an appropriate manufacturing or purchase batch size and why you should not use "Economic Order Quantity" (EOQ)?
• How can you predict service levels & run simulations on proposed changes?
• How do you forecast with seasonality & trend?
• How do you automatically discount or adjust unusual demands ("outliers") from historical data?
• How do you incorporate Pareto / ABC Analysis, lead-time & trend into the model?

Note 1: Due to the hands-on nature of this course we only allow a maximum of six people to attend, so advanced booking is recommended!

Note 2: Day 1 requires a basic knowledge of algebra & basic use of MS Excel. It is a prerequisite for Day 2 which uses more advanced formulae in Excel

Note 3: Draws on the content from courses SSC01 above & SSC05 below

SSC04 Production Planning and Control Back to Basics (2 days) (course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for newcomers to this topic, this overview course draws on key points, highlights and conclusions of the basics of production planning and control from a number of our other courses and includes a diagnostic checklist to enable you to diagnose problems in your own processes, this course will enable you to answer the following questions:

• How do you increase capacity / output for free!
• What are the key elements of planning and control needed to manage production?
• What are the most commonly used, simple methods and what are their underlying principles?
• How do you manage demand?
• How do you manage the production plan?
• How do you manage the materials plan?
• How do you manage the materials with simple visible controls and pull systems?
• How do you manage the capacity and lead time?
• How do you measure success, avoid repeating your mistakes and drive improvement?
• How do you diagnose problems in production planning and control?
• Includes exercises in:
  • MRP1 simulation,
  • Kanban simulation,
  • 2 bin systems,
  • Visual control systems,
  • Designing and using a loading board,
  • Diagnosing problems (your development checklist)

Note: Includes our unique 175 point self-diagnostic health check, which you should be able to complete following the course to determine your development needs.

SSC05 Producing Accurate Forecasts (1 day) (Course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for all levels of demand analysts, planning, inventory management, sales and purchasing personnel responsible for forecasting and particularly valuable for newcomers to this topic, this detailed course will enable you to answer the following questions:

• Why do you need to forecast?

• Why Forecasts Are Wrong (The 10 Traps & 52 sources of forecast error)

• How do you reduce the need to forecast?

• How do you improve the quality of forecasts (The Key Success Factors)

• What are the good and bad features to look for in computer based forecasting models?

• How do you manage demand better?

• What are the implications of poor forecasting?

• How to avoid the problems caused by inaccurate forecasts?

• How do you forecast low volume / infrequent demand items more accurately?

• How do you continuously improve the process?

Note: Includes our 52 point forecasting self-diagnostic questionnaire

SSC06 Warehouse Operations Management  (1 day) (Course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for  potential section leaders, warehouse / stores, and work movement control personnel , this detailed course aims to show how to manage stock efficiently and accurately, design a stores stock recording process and an action plan for its implementation. It will enable you:

• To design an effective stores layout to minimise handling and store stock safely and efficiently

• To design a stores system that keeps track of stock and work in process, accurately

• To set up the stores controls

  • Visual controls

  • Housekeeping

  • Stock checking (Perpetual Inventory)

• To create an audit checklist

• To create a task list for the implementation

SSC07 Strategic Supply Chain Management (2 Days)  (Course schedules), (Request course details)

Particularly applicable to Batch processing, Food, and Fast Moving Consumer Goods industries, this overview course is designed for supply chain designers, senior planning / inventory management and operations managers to enable them to contribute to the design and implementation of a radical, holistic, supply chain centred alternative, namely:

 "A lean and agile supply chain and distribution network"

This detailed course discusses the 13 principles of lean and agile supply chains, how to design, implement and operate a sustainable lean and agile supply chain, and construct a task list for implementation. It focuses on the real issues:

• meeting the business plan

• improving customer service

• reducing inventory value and obsolescence

• improving production efficiency

• effectively implementing product changes

• enabling marketing and product development initiatives

• reducing administration costs

• managing the dynamics & eliminating the "Forrester Effect"/ "Bullwhip Effect"

• overcoming the constraints

• creating supply chain resilience

• good communications

It rejects:

• mass production principles

• outdated policies such as "Economic Order Quantity"

• ineffective, unstable, "nervous" scheduling systems

• over-complex approaches

• "silo" (local optimums) approaches and thinking

• "push" systems

SSC08 Participative Sales & Operations Planning (2 Days)  (Course schedules), (Request course details)

Designed for all stakeholders in the planning process including sales managers, operations managers, supplies / purchasing managers, and planners, this detailed course covers the design of the process & uses a simple capacity model, to enable you to design and implement your own Sales and Operations Planning systems, which supplies what customers want, when they want them, is reconciled to the business plan and utilises resources effectively. It will enable you to answer the following questions:

• How do you manage demand?
• What is Sales and Operations Planning, Master Production Scheduling and Scheduling and what is the relationship between them?
• How do you design and create a planning process that delivers products on time and at short lead-time but also manages resources effectively?
• How do you manage seasonal or variable demand and smooth production simply?
• How do you manage the introduction of new products into production?
• How do you create a simple capacity model and what are the procedures for maintaining it?
• What scheduling strategies are beneficial and how do you design a simple scheduling process?
• How to avoid scheduling complexity?
• How do load, capacity and lead-time interact?
• What is the role of Rough Cut Capacity Planning (RCCP) in operations planning?
• What is the role of "Takt" time in operations planning and control and balancing process capacity?
• How can you use "Takt" time to manage demand and avoid surprise demand?
• How do you quickly check if you have the capacity available to deliver when required and make accurate promises to customers?
• How do you implement a Sales & Operations Planning system?

Note1: Includes Includes our MS Excel capacity modelling starter pack to enable you to interpret budgets, forecasts, and your order book into resource / load projections.

Note 2: This course is also available as an in-house workshop. When run with all the stakeholders in the room it produces an outline design and implementation task list.

Note 3: Draws on materials from courses M04 & M05.

Note 4:  This course which is applicable to manufacturing, distribution and service delivery environments assumes an active role in the management of the sales process. Our course M04 Participative Master Production Scheduling assumes a passive role in the Sales Management Process (i.e. not Sales Planning) & is confined to manufacturing environments.

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The above training courses are available. They can be readily tailored to suit individual requirements for in-house workshops.

To discuss your consulting or training needs with one of our independent consultants or trainers please Contact Us.

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© SM Thacker & Associates (Consultancy and Training Specialists) Original January 2000, Version 13 December 2007