The Roundtable: The future of probabilistic planning

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2021 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2021

This is the last regular issue of Supply Chain Management Review for 2021. Normally this time of year, I look forward to what’s in front of us. That’s turned out to be a fool’s errand over the last year and a half. So, instead, I looked back to see what I wrote this time last year. My column was titled “COVID hasn’t stopped supply chain progress.”

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A few months ago, I interviewed the chief supply chain officer for one of the world’s largest distributors of alcoholic beverages. When I asked what was his biggest challenge, I expected to hear about port congestion or under-staffed warehouses. Instead, it was planning. None of his company’s historical records prepared his planners for dealing with the shutdown of bars, restaurants and hotels in the spring of 2020, or the explosion in wine and spirits being consumed at home.

Now, as business was picking back up in 2021, his planners were equally flummoxed because they didn’t know if consumers would return to bars and restaurants or continue entertaining at home. With many services businesses struggling again from the impact of the Delta variant, the outlook remains cloudy at best.

Clearly, planning is ready for a transformation. That was the topic of a panel discussion I moderated last May for Bluecrux, a value chain process and technology firm with a NextGen Digital SC Twin for probabilistic planning. I was joined by Koen Jaspers, the co-founder and CEO of Bluecrux.

The panel was organized by Jake Barr, the CEO of Blue World Supply Chain Consulting, a firm he founded after a 33-year career with Proctor & Gamble, where he was global director, supply chain network operations. Barr was joined by three experienced supply chain executives:

• Jay Koganti, vice president of supply chain COE at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. He leads supply chain planning, including center of excellence activities and supply chain transformation.
• Scott DeGroot, vice president, global distribution and planning at Kimberly-Clark. He leads global planning and distribution, including the physical movement of goods.
• Eliza Simeonova, vice president, global supply chain, Pet Care at Mars. Her role includes planning, physical logistics, network design and digital transformation.

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