IN CONVERSATION with BOB STAHL 2019-01-02
Starting Off the New Year By: Stephen Cherlet, CSCTA My colleague, Tom Gottlieb, and I are fortunate in being able to have regular discussions with Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) luminary Robert (Bob) Stahl. Our discussions are wide-ranging on the topic of S&OP but always interesting and illuminating. We try to extract some of the pearls of wisdom that come out of those discussions, so we can share them across a wide audience. Our format is like a “fireside chat” that can lead in any, and multiple directions but the basis for our talks is consistently Bob’s book Sales Forecasting--A New Approach , Sales & Operations Planning--The How-To Handbook . The steps and phases outlined in the book are summarized at the end of the article for easy reference. In today’s discussion, the three of us were talking about S&OP implementation. Bob pointed out that the strength of an implementer is not founded on specific knowledge of S&OP but rather on...