Brian works in supply chain planning for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a company that markets some of the biggest names in over-the-counter medicine today. Brian helps create sales forecasts for the company’s commercial partners and then analyzes the manufacturing capabilities to determine whether or not the company can meet the projected consumer demand.
Transcript
>> My name is Brian Laucher [phonetic]. And I am currently in supply chain planning for McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Supply chain planning, it fits in the supply chain -- management supply chain optimization space. And the idea is that we work with our commercial partners to generate a forecast for how much the business expects to sell of particular products. And then the supply planning and inventory management side of the business is determining how -- do we have enough capacity? Do we have enough manufacturing? Do we have enough raw materials in order to meet that forecast, to ultimately be able to meet that forecast to ultimately be able to meet customers demand when they need the products. On a daily basis, we are really trying to ensure that, like I said, we have a enough product available to meet customers needs. So the things that our team deals with are looking at the amount of inventory that we have. Is there enough in our network. In our warehouses. In our DC's. We're actually looking out at a system over time to ensure that not only do we have enough inventory today, but do we have enough inventory next week; next month, or really even looking two or three years out in the future to make sure we have enough capacity and will have enough product available. So people on the team are taking a look at do we have enough inventory? Are we getting our product available on time? Are our trucks late? Do we -- what's our forecast look like? How much has the forecast changed since last month? And doing a lot of that data analysis and trying to understand, again, will we have enough product to keep up with demand and inventory. And a lot of what we do is -- in the businesses that I've been in, are -- have a very big seasonal component to it. So there's a certain time of the year when we know that we're not going to have enough capacity available to make all the product that we need. So we are always trying to look ahead and decide how much do we need to produce, and when do we need to produce it in order to have it available for the season. [ Silence ]
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