Improving Playtime's Supply Chain Forecasting Processes

This report examines the forecasting processes within Playtime, highlighting issues such as disconnected systems and departmental silos. The analysis emphasizes the drawbacks of separate forecasting reports and advocates for an integrated approach. The report proposes the implementation of a Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process to achieve internal consensus, and explores various supply chain strategies like Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI), Efficient Customer Response (ECR), and Continuous Replenishment Planning (CRP). It focuses on Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) as a key solution to improve forecasting accuracy and efficiency by enabling trading partners to agree on a single forecast and execute a unified plan. The report concludes that CPFR can replace existing forecasting methods to improve supply chain performance.

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply Chain Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
1. Issues with the Current Forecasting Process of Playtime
The present method of forecasting that were present within Playtime had some issues in
performing the processes. The company had comprised of groups with each of the groups
performing the action of creation and analysis of forecast in a separate manner. Hence, the best
combined solution would not be discussed as each of the groups would plan for maximizing their
portions of benefit. In an additional form, there is a possibility that the forecast would be sent
back to the level of operations for the task of performing re-evaluation at the request of the
finance sector (Heckmann, Comes & Nickel, 2015). It has also been seen that the Playtime
Company has some problems due to disconnected systems between the operations team, supply
chain and their functions based on marketing. This also creates a major kind of issue for the
company.
From the discussion over the case study of Playtime, it can be discussed that it would not
be beneficial for processing of separate forecast reports for each department. The processing of
separate forecasts mainly create a certain problem when they would conflict with the reports
created by finance team and would be presented to the stakeholders or investors (Govindan &
Popiuc, 2014). Any kind of conflict within the reports generated, would not only affect towards
the maintaining of overall transparency within the business but it would also affect the capacity
of the company towards manufacturing. This would also lead to negative reports towards the
levels of inventory. In case if the supported forecast would not be shared within the organization,
then it might happen that each of the department would prepare materials and stock them in order
to be presented for the upcoming season (Wang et al., 2016). However, this process would
further result in a surplus of potential inability and internal issues based on manufacturing based
on meeting industrial demands.

2SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
2. Design of an Effective and Efficient Forecasting Process
The S&OP process that has been discussed within the case study helps in putting a focus
over the ways in which different organizations plan their internal business process and thus think
about bringing about a competitive advantage within the market. In the case of Playtime
manufacturing company, the S&OP process could be described as the way in which the company
would be structuring and developing the planning processes in order to arrive at an internal
consensus forecast.
In the next process, it can be discussed that the members working for the company and
within the supply chain should agree upon a forecast report of consensus. From the discussion of
the case, it has further been understood that the various initiatives within the industry should
attempt towards the creation of effective and efficient practices in order to maintain the integrity
of the supply chain and their several internal processes and activities (Ivanov, Sokolov & Dolgui,
2014). There are different names that could be presented within the supply chain processes of
Playtime, which could be discussed as vendor-managed inventory (VMI), efficient customer
response (ECR) and continuous replenishment planning (CRP). With the inclusion of at least one
of each of the processes within the industry, they had faced some kind of success with the facility
of integration of replenishment with the members present in the supply chain.
However, it had been seen that there was some kind of lack in the inclusion of facilities
and a proper structure of collaborative planning within the work processes. There are several
integrated possibilities that could be made with the supply chain processes. However, there is
also one form of major initiative that is mainly been aimed to be included within the supply
chain (Melnyk, Narasimhan & DeCampos, 2014). It is known as collaborative planning,
forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). The CPFR initiative can be thus defined as one of the

3SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
most innovative model based on performing breakthrough processes within the process of
forecasting, planning of new business processes and understand the time of replenishment of
stocks for the industry. Based on this approach, the distributors, retailers and manufacturers
would be able to make utilize the technologies of Internet in order to perform collaboration and
execution of particular business processes.
Hence, from the discussion, it can thus be concluded that CPFR would allow most form
of trading partners to come to an agreement about the single kind of forecast for any item. Each
of the business partners would be able to plan for forecast that could be executed in a single plan
of execution (Hollmann, Scavarda & Thomé, 2015). This kind of new process would thus replace
the existing methods based on forecasting in which the trading partners would be able to develop
their own kind of forecast based on an item and thus each of the presented forecasts would be
different from each other.

4SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
References
Govindan, K., & Popiuc, M. N. (2014). Reverse supply chain coordination by revenue sharing
contract: A case for the personal computers industry. European Journal of Operational
Research, 233(2), 326-336.
Heckmann, I., Comes, T., & Nickel, S. (2015). A critical review on supply chain risk–Definition,
measure and modeling. Omega, 52, 119-132.
Hollmann, R. L., Scavarda, L. F., & Thomé, A. M. T. (2015). Collaborative planning, forecasting
and replenishment: a literature review. International Journal of Productivity and
Performance Management, 64(7), 971-993.
Ivanov, D., Sokolov, B., & Dolgui, A. (2014). The Ripple effect in supply chains: trade-off
‘efficiency-flexibility-resilience’in disruption management. International Journal of
Production Research, 52(7), 2154-2172.
Melnyk, S. A., Narasimhan, R., & DeCampos, H. A. (2014). Supply chain design: issues,
challenges, frameworks and solutions.
Wang, G., Gunasekaran, A., Ngai, E. W., & Papadopoulos, T. (2016). Big data analytics in
logistics and supply chain management: Certain investigations for research and
applications. International Journal of Production Economics, 176, 98-110.