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Using spreadsheets in production planning in a pharmaceutical company
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Resumo(s)
Living in the technological era, a successful company nowadays is the company that integrates
Information Technology (IT) with its business. Otherwise, it might face a huge risk of not
being able to survive in today’s market against the huge competition that is highly influenced
by IT. However, integrating IT with business is not so simple due to several factors, namely:
the available resources, choosing the right solution, top management support, time constraints,
and finally achieving the proper user training and adoption. It is obviously not so wise to keep
on waiting until all these obstacles are solved when there is a possibility of using some of the
available resources such as Microsoft Office tools that might ease several processes of the
business until the needed system is implemented and used.
In a supply chain, as a supplier or a manufacturer, production usually follows a production
plan that is typically created by the supply planning department. A production plan relies on a
demand forecast, whereas a demand forecast usually relies on historical data, but the market
demand changes and a forecast does not always match the demand, so whenever there is a
change in the forecast, production plans are updated accordingly (Graves, 2011). Therefore, if
we are looking to optimize the supply chain, it is necessary to build a strong relationship
between the supply chain partners because their collaboration becomes vital in such a
scenario. This collaboration means that the partners of the supply chain must share their
information with each other (Groznik & Maslaric, 2012). Such information can be about the
inventory stock levels of the customer towards the supplier which helps in optimizing the
Reorder Level that is defined as “the point at which the company will reorder stock” (Meng,
2006), resulting in creating more successful production plans that matches the market demand.
However, these processes can hardly be done and managed manually, theyactually require the
help of an IT system that is integrated with the supply chain for achieving the expected results.
Aligning IT with the supply chain and using e-business to manage the relationship between
suppliers and customers can lower costs, this is due to the fact that IT can contribute in
supporting the collaboration and coordination through an easy way of information sharing
between the partners of the supply chain (Auramo, Kauremaa, & Tanskanen, 2005).
Moreover, using IT in a supply chain does not necessarily need to be costly or difficult to use;
insteadspreadsheets for instance can be used for Inventory Planning that is defined as
“figuring out what your inventory should be (not counting what you have)” (Estep, 2012).
Even though using spreadsheet tools such as Microsoft Office tools does not require
purchasing an IT system, it is still considered a type of integrating IT with a business process
that can significantly improve the supply chain.
Descrição
Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies Management
Palavras-chave
Business Process Management Enterprise Resource Planning Business Process Modeling Notation