November 2026
New aerial work platforms lined up in the plant car parks, and the spare parts to go with them in the stores. That is the most visible symptom of a group where sales forecasts are neither shared nor centralised.
At Haulotte, a manufacturer of aerial work platforms, I was Group Supply Chain Manager and project manager for setting up S&OP and the DynaSys APS. Here is what that experience taught me.
The starting point: forecasting by guesswork
Three sales subsidiaries, covering Europe-Middle East-Africa, Asia and Oceania, fed the plants. Each one shared its forecasts when it had any. There was no common process and no centralisation. The horizon was 12 months, with revisions made ad hoc, without a calendar.
The result: plants produced on assumptions they could not check. Finished machines piled up in the car parks, and spare parts stock followed.
1. Start with “who does what”
Before talking about tools, you need to know who builds the forecast, who approves it, who is consulted and who is simply informed, at each step. That is what a RACI is for. Its golden rule: only one “A” per line, one person ultimately accountable for each decision.
In a group with subsidiaries, the typical pattern is this: subsidiaries build their forecasts, sales management consolidates them and commits to them, supply chain checks them against plant capacity, and the S&OP meeting decides what cannot be met.
2. A single source of forecasts
The DynaSys APS became the only place where forecasts live. No more files sent by email, no more competing versions: subsidiaries enter their figures, sales management consolidates, supply chain plans from the same numbers.
3. A monthly rhythm and concrete decisions
The S&OP meeting brought sales, production, purchasing and supply chain together every month. Decisions covered two very concrete topics:
- which machines to build, and in which plant;
- how much to allocate to each subsidiary on models where production capacity fell short.
4. The hardest part: centralising
The real resistance was not technical. Centralising subsidiaries’ forecasts means asking sales management to own a single figure for the whole group, and subsidiaries to play by common rules. It was painful. But that step made everything else possible.
What I take away
I left the group before there was enough hindsight to measure the impact on stock. Two signs nevertheless showed the process had taken hold: the meeting really did take place every month, and sales management did centralise the subsidiaries’ forecasts.
- Process before tools. An APS is only valuable if everyone knows what to put into it, and when.
- One person accountable per decision. Without a clear “A”, forecasting remains nobody’s job.
- A rhythm that holds. A monthly meeting that actually takes place every month, with the right people around the table, is worth more than a perfect process on paper.
- Measure whether the process holds before measuring its results: a meeting that takes place and data that arrive on time are the first KPIs.
Do you want to structure your S&OP or get out of scattered forecasts? Discover my approach to planning or tell me about your context.