Client Stories: Milliken's S&OP Improvements

The Vice President, Supply Chain at Milliken & Company turned to Gartner for support on increasing the agility of the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, specifically: functional maturity assessment, workshopping and process management. Gartner’s expertise enabled key performance outcomes at Milliken, including efficiency, prioritization and supply chain management maturity.

Mission-critical priority

A surge in demand but a lack of capacity prompted the Vice President, Supply Chain at Milliken to evaluate the agility of the organization’s sales and operations planning (S&OP) process.

How Gartner helped

The client used:

Gartner Supply Chain Score to definitively diagnose the maturity of the organization’s S&OP process.
Gartner-led, data-driven workshop designed to uncover the highest priority performance gaps to fill.
Practical, proven guidance for structuring the S&OP process to handle future growth, running demand planning meetings, and defining demand planning goals.

Business impact

With support from Gartner for Supply Chain, the client:

Reorganized the demand planning function and S&OP process, driving greater efficiency while still delivering on customer expectations.
Benchmarked Milliken’s demand planning capabilities against industry peers, enabling better prioritization and helping to secure buy-in on changes and investments from corporate leadership.
Accessed deep, nuanced insight about supply chain management best practice that would have been difficult to obtain internally at Milliken.