Demand Planning, IBP and Supply Chain Optimization

Demand Planning, IBP and Supply Chain Optimization Valtitude / Demand Planning LLC When we take your engagement, we ensure that your Value Chain is optimized as a Demand Driven Supply Network.

Our Consultants have developed effective methodologies for designing and implementing business processes for Demand Planning, Sales Forecasting, Inventory Management, IBP, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) among others. Our key services include:

1. Diagnostic and Design - We help companies roll out best practices in demand management, Supply Chain Optimization and S&OP. We study your planning

process in the context of your business model and industry practices and develop the optimal SCM process with the right tool-set.

2. Usability Consulting - Transform your Enterprise tool to be more usable and planner-friendly. Our niche consulting includes software tuning and detailed on-site training. Recent success stories include Pepsi, Mead Johnson, and Jack Daniels.

3. Training and Workshops - We offer On-Site Workshops at your location, Web Workshops, and Training Seminars conducted in a public training facility to bring in participants from many companies. The training sessions are offered under the following broad tracks.

-Demand Planning and Forecasting
-Supply Chain Metrics
-Sales and Operations Planning
-Demand Forecasting in SAP APO
-Supply Chain Collaboration
-Inventory Optimization
-Retail and POS Forecasting

For more information about our services, please visit https://valuechainplanning.com/

SAP IBP rollouts take too long. Here's why — and how to fix it. ⚡ (Hint: it's rarely the technology.)Most implementation...
05/26/2026

SAP IBP rollouts take too long. Here's why — and how to fix it.
⚡ (Hint: it's rarely the technology.)

Most implementations stall not because IBP is hard — but because teams try to boil the ocean before proving value.

After working with CPG brands across snacks, beverages, condiments & healthcare, the same failure patterns keep showing up.

Here's the leaner approach that actually delivers 👇
🎯 Start Focused — Pick ONE business unit or region where inventory pain is loudest. Early wins build the internal champions you need for scale.
📊 Fix the Data First — Demand variability, lead times, service level targets. Validate these with supply chain AND finance before touching a single parameter. Skip this? You'll lose weeks downstream.
⚙️ Model Your Actual Reality — Supplier lead time variability, MOQs, shelf life. Generic out-of-the-box settings rarely fit CPG nuances. Don't use an omnibus lead time for everything.
🔁 Build the S&OP Bridge from Day 1 — Inventory targets can't live in a silo. Connect IBP output to your demand & supply review cadence and the business will actually trust — and act on — the numbers.
🤝 Don't Skip Change Management — Planners adopt what they understand.

Explain ability drives trust. Trust drives results. Every time.
The technology is rarely the bottleneck. Process clarity and stakeholder alignment are. 🎯

Setting up Demand Modeling in SAP IBP? Here's your quick-start primer. 📊 4 steps. No fluff.Most demand planners dive int...
05/20/2026

Setting up Demand Modeling in SAP IBP? Here's your quick-start primer.

📊 4 steps. No fluff.
Most demand planners dive into IBP configuration without a clear sequence. This is the order that actually makes sense 👇

⚙️ Step 0 — General Settings Start with the foundation. Planning horizon, time profile, aggregation level & key figure mapping. Get this wrong and everything downstream suffers.

🧹 Step 1 — Pre-Processing Two highest-impact controls: → Outlier correction → Missing data imputation Plus causal factor removal & intermittent demand detection. Clean inputs = trustworthy forecasts.

🤖 Step 2 — Model Selection Your model library at a glance: → Exponential Smoothing (incl. Holt-Winters triple) → ARIMA / ARIMAX → Croston for intermittent demand → Moving Average & Linear Regression → Best Fit auto-selector Let the data pick the model — or know when to override it.

📏 Step 3 — Post-Processing RMSE vs. WMAPE — know the difference: → RMSE for volume-sensitive items where large misses are costly → WMAPE for portfolio scorecards where scale-independence matters across SKUs

One metric doesn't fit all. Choose wisely.

Demand modeling isn't magic. It's method, sequence, and the right configuration from the start.

!🚨 Do you have to get on emergency planning meetings most of the time?Despite the advent of AI and the proliferation of...
05/13/2026

!

🚨 Do you have to get on emergency planning meetings most of the time?

Despite the advent of AI and the proliferation of Agents, most planning teams are still fighting three battles at once - forecast misses, inventory imbalances, and supply disruptions - with disconnected tools that can't keep up. Even after a few million dollars, most big footprint tools have challenges addressing the real challenges.

What are we offering? 👇

🔮 Demand Planning - AI-powered forecasting and predictive modeling that learns from your data, adapts in real time, and gives your team the confidence to plan ahead - not just react. Simple truth is you need good aggregate plans over the next sever
al months - with more granularity in the near term.

Supply Planning - Synchronize production, sourcing, and logistics in one platform. Reduce lead time risk. Improve responsiveness when the unexpected hits.

⚖️ Inventory Optimization - Eliminate costly stockouts and excess inventory. Just enough inventory at all the right inventory nodes...... You are burning cash or upsetting customers otherwise.

💡 PlanVida brings planning and analytics together in a single, cloud-native platform - purpose-built for supply chain teams that need speed, accuracy, and visibility.

Valtitude is trusted by Fortune 500 companies across CPG, Pharma, High-Tech, Food & Beverage, and more - including Pfizer, Honeywell, Qualcomm, Pepsi Foods, Mars Petcare and many more high-profile names.

⚡ Implementation in as little as 90 days. Seamless ERP integration. No infrastructure headaches. IO could be as little as 30 days.

🛠️ Will be glad to offer a no-cost Prototype - See PlanVida modeled with your own data before you commit a single dollar.

🎓 Complimentary Onboarding & Training - Your team, fully enabled from day one.



🚨 Still stuck in emergency planning meetings? That's a sign your tools are failing you.Most supply chain teams are fight...
05/04/2026

🚨 Still stuck in emergency planning meetings?

That's a sign your tools are failing you.

Most supply chain teams are fighting 3 battles at once - 📉 Forecast misses 📦 Inventory imbalances 🔗 Supply disruptions

…with disconnected systems that can't keep up.

There's a better way.
PlanVida + Valtitude bring it all together in one cloud-native platform:

🔮 Demand Planning — AI forecasting that adapts in real time, not just reacts

🚚 Supply Planning — Sync production, sourcing & logistics to cut lead time risk

⚖️ Inventory Optimization — No more stockouts. No more excess. Just the right stock, in the right place.

⚡ Go live in as little as 90 days. 🛠️ Free prototype with your data — zero commitment. 🎓 Full onboarding & training included.

Your planning team deserves tools that actually work.

04/15/2026

🔷 !

🚀 !

🎉 So we've launched the Segmentation App on the Azure Cloud - freely available for all planners to get a taste of what it can do to make your planning more efficient!

✨ Yes, it's easy to use! Just load your data and let the engine deliver the analysis in seconds
🆓 Yes, it's free - not just a 30-day trial!

🌐

This is just the beginning; Planvida will soon launch Demand Planning Suite, IO, Supply planning and TPM with the power of Modern Ai tools.





🌍 !At Valtitude, we help organizations unlock the full power of SAP IBP - from the ground up. Brownfield or Greenfield,...
04/08/2026

🌍 !

At Valtitude, we help organizations unlock the full power of SAP IBP - from the ground up. Brownfield or Greenfield, we level the playing field for users, super-users, techies, middle managers and c-Suite. With advances in Fiori, information can be accessed seamlessly at any level...

Whether you're building your planning model from scratch or optimizing what you already have, our team brings deep expertise in:

✅ Planning Model Configuration - transforming your requirements into a high-performing planning machine
✅ Custom Attributes and Algorithms - categorizing your unique business data the way YOU need it and adapt for real time decision making
✅ Advanced Planning Levels - analyzing data at the granularity your decisions
✅ Governance & Transparency - maintaining accountability across every planning cycle

Supply chain complexity isn't slowing down. Your planning capability shouldn't either.

Whether you want to take advantage of the enhancements in 2508, 2511, or 2602 or just re-engineer to make the system more usable or just want to know what can be done better to marry up with your process, let's connect.



📍 Woburn, MA | 🌐 valuechainplanning.com | 📞 +1 (781) 995-0685

In a previous post I had illustrated how Chronos 2 outperformed the standard Box Jenkins and Holt Winters forecasts from...
03/26/2026

In a previous post I had illustrated how Chronos 2 outperformed the standard Box Jenkins and Holt Winters forecasts from Python as well a the forecasts from a popular Commercial time series forecasting package.

My guess is Chronos 2 has this data memorized based on all the training datasets provided. This age old data was provided by Box Jenkins in their classic text book on Time Series Analysis and Control published in 1970.

Perhaps Chronos was trained to spit out the forecast from its memory when it was able to match all the in-sample data points.......

Zero shot forecasting?

Perhaps worth just zero in real-life forecasting?!

The jury is still out on what it can do with all this training for the unknowable future where forecasting really matters. Our initial tests on real-life "sh*tty" data from industry do not look promising with Chronos 2. More to come on this.

But I am curious why memorized data that has the future numbers etched in its memory cannot help Chronos 2 to forecast perfectly?!

Why not extend zero shot to come up with a Zero Mape forecast?! Just puzzled.

We tested the Chronos Foundation model with just one simple time series data set that is available everywhere - the Air...
03/25/2026



We tested the Chronos Foundation model with just one simple time series data set that is available everywhere - the Airline Passenger traffic data from the last century.

Chronos is a Time Series foundation model from Amazon.

As you can see, Chronos-2 pretty much outperformed everything else including the Bolt and original. We also compared this to a traditional Holt Winters and Sarima expert selection from a popular commercial software.

Chronos-2 turned in a WMAPE of 4.16% and Normalized RMSE of 4.9%.

Zero shot forecasting? Impressive. Although this is a highly forecastable series, the fact that it raced and outperformed everything else is indeed fantastic.

Interesting to note that no training or supervision needed to get this forecast result.

Chronos is probably trained on this data ad nauseum - it has the Airline passenger traffic data etched in its core memory from time immemorial until now.... Perhaps it already knows the future.

?

The real meat in the pudding will be known when we start using actual business data to test this - "sh*tty" data that is!

Stay tuned for an update on how commoners like us ordinary business users can make use of Ai and several foundation models to make forecasting a bit simpler.



Valtitude has officially launched the Segmentation App - now live on the Microsoft Marketplace!If you're in supply chain...
03/24/2026

Valtitude has officially launched the Segmentation App - now live on the Microsoft Marketplace!

If you're in supply chain planning, you know how messy things get with unstructured data and unexpected volatility - blind spots that cost you in the form of excess invenstory or missed service levels.

Segmentation or product classification is the first step to fix that.

The PlanVida Segmentation App automates your ABC / Pareto analysis and adds additional flavors in the form of demand volatility (CV), demand intermittency, Life Cycle curve, besides factors for Seasonality and Trend — goes beyond just volume.

Our app also easily flags demand variability, short history and obsolete items. The results tructure everything around your business hierarchy, not a generic template.

What you get:

* Clear and concise ABC-XYZ classification across your entire portfolio
* Pareto insights that show graphically the SKUs that drive your volume
* Automatic flagging of intermittent, short history, and zero-class items
* Outputs your planning team can act on immediately

Upload your data, configure your thresholds, get the results!

Simple to set up!

Questions? Reach out at [email protected] — we're happy to walk you through it.



&OP

🚀 It's official! PlanVida Segmentation App is now LIVE on the Microsoft Marketplace.We built this for every supply chain...
03/20/2026

🚀 It's official!

PlanVida Segmentation App is now LIVE on the Microsoft Marketplace.

We built this for every supply chain team spending days on manual segmentation work that should take just a few minutes. Here's what you get for FREE with our on-demand app.

1. Full ABC-XYZ segmentation in seconds
2. Automatic classification across thousands of SKUs
3. Pareto analysis and demand variability reports
4. Fully configurable - zero coding required.

Load your data. Set up the threshold parameters - .. Click a Button and voila! You can download the results in an instant.

No spreadsheets. No guesswork. Just results!

🔗 Search "PlanVida Segmentation" on Microsoft AppSource - link in comments.

Like and share to help us reach the supply chain teams who need this most 🙌

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