I thought I’d share them with you, in the hope that you may be able to avoid similar pitfalls:
- Excel will become the preferred tool to run your business.
- Inventories will spiral out of control.
- Inventory
reduction instructions will be issued from the boardroom. - Customer’s unhappiness escalates, as service levels are affected by not having the right inventory at the right place at the right time.
- Planners, buyers and inventory controllers become overloaded as they spend their days fighting fire after fire.
- Sometime later, this will be followed by an increase in operating staff – “we need more people to get stock to our customers”.
- Some years after this, as inventory builds once more, the pendulum swings, and retrenchments will follow. You may even start outsourcing “none-core functions” like IT, procurement or warehousing.
- There will be constant calls for more technology to help do the work smarter.
- SAP will be eventually be re-implemented.
- All of this will happen amid cries for SAP to be thrown out.
Each of these predictions coming to fruition costs money, and lots of it. Even contemplating them is costly and debilitating. If you find you are experiencing some of these challenges, all is not lost. There are solutions and while they do require some redirected effort, you can you get SAP's MRP to work much, much more for you.
Here are a few blogs I have written over the years that may give you some insights on where to start:
