Automotive manufacturers are faced with complicated supply and demand planning challenges—from customizable order options to expanding sales lines to high levels of competition. In just the past 3 years, manufacturers have been forced to balance between these pressures in a variety of ways: - Emerging countries—especially China, Brazil and India had rampant double digit growth - North America rebounded from the extremely difficult conditions from 2008-2010 but showed continued exposure to market volatility - The tsunami and earthquake in Japan and the floods in Taiwan posed major challenges to the supply chain - Changing demographics in Europe and North America driving preference for sustainable products and increased demand for battery powered vehicles

1. INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING FOR AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING DATA SHEET
Steelwedge Integrated Business Planning
for Automotive Manufacturing
Your company must be able to better connect with suppliers and respond to changing
regional and global customer demand to remain successful.
Leading Information Technology research and consultancy, Gartner, summarized in its
2011 Top Supply Chain 25 report:
To respond, automotive companies need a deep understanding of customer demand to
maximize assets and finished goods inventory. By rethinking existing, siloed processes
and developing new ones that anticipate demand, companies are able to react more
quickly to the unexpected. This results in high inventory turns and lowered lead-times
from order to delivery.
Role of Integrated Business Planning in Automotive
Automotive Demand, Supply and Product Characteristics
DEMAND SUPPLY PRODUCT
Long lead-time operations
Assembly line manufacturing
Built-to-Order & Built- to-Stock
Highly configured products with a
mix of large multi-level BOM and
SKU-level, simple products
Statistical forecasting at SKU level
has limited application.
Requires attach rate forecasting
Page 1 of 2 | © 2013 Steelwedge Software, Inc. All rights reserved. – info@steelwedge.com – 925.460.1700
Automotive manufacturers are faced with complicated supply and demand planning
challenges—from customizable order options to expanding sales lines to high levels of
competition. In just the past 3 years, manufacturers have been forced to balance between
these pressures in a variety of ways:
Emerging countries—especially China, Brazil and India had rampant double digit growth
North America rebounded from the extremely difficult conditions from 2008-2010 but
showed continued exposure to market volatility
The tsunami and earthquake in Japan and the floods in Taiwan posed major challenges to
the supply chain
Changing demographics in Europe and North America driving preference for sustainable
products and increased demand for battery powered vehicles
The right planning creates a medium-to-long-term volume program plan based on: top-down
financial budget considerations, global capacity, material restrictions and customer demand.
Using an integrated technology that provides insight into multiple data sources, you can:
Manage a global financial budget tied to sales numbers, revenues and operational forecasts
Model dealer hierarchy and perform allocation of supply across various levels of the hierarchy
Forecast and plan at a vehicle option level instead of only at product family model level
(lower level of granularity)
Perform option attach-rate forecasting (statistical bill of materials)
Allocate capacity and raw materials across multiple suppliers based on overall capacity
utilization and overall profits
Model lead times associated with transportation, tooling, manufacturing as part of the long
term capacity planning
”
“ Organizations seeking industry leadership must establish demand-driven
business excellence and agile value networks that emphasize supplier-partner
collaboration, and achieve process optimization.

2. Page 2 of 2 | © 2013 Steelwedge Software, Inc. All rights reserved. – info@steelwedge.com – 925.460.1700
Steelwedge Software, Inc.
Steelwedge integrated sales, operations and finance planning solutions provide the "shock absorbers" to recognize, recalibrate and respond in a volatile environment.
Business agility starts with Steelwedge for a clear line of sight from plan to performance to profit. For additional information, please email us: info@steelwedge.com.
INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING FOR AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING DATA SHEET
Steelwedge Advantages for Automotive Manufacturers
For the Sales Team:
Enable collaborative forecasting for sales reps and sales management
Power plans at any level of detail
Integrate with sales pipeline from CRM to support opportunity management
Provide annual operating plan (AOP) visibility as part of S&OP process
View cross-functional demand plans (sales, marketing, product management, etc.)
For the Product Management Team:
Develop attach-rate forecasts to drive mix forecasting for complex automotive products and
key components.
Forecast using region- or dealer-specific terms, such as customer specific product packages,
while aggregating independent and dependent demand for products and components.
For the Planning Team:
Drive company specific planning processes with One-Click Planning™ alert-driven workflow
Provide planning process visibility and progress reporting
Drive assigned or exception-based review policies
Integrate with ERP, SCM, CRM and financial systems that widely differ in their taxonomy
or granularity
Establish role-specific planning views, automatic semantic resolution, parent analysis and
user driven catalogs
For the Executive Team:
Consolidate supply, demand and finance hierarchies into one comprehensive model
Enable more detailed planning assumptions via relationship attributes
(e.g., customer specific pricing, source specific costing)
Best Practice Spotlight: European Automotive Manufacturer
A large, global luxury car manufacturer is currently experiencing high growth across their two
major brands but the company wasn’t maximizing the success through a single S&OP
process. Their sales forecasting—which incorporated dealer/importer forecasts, regional and
market forecasts, production forecasts, and more—were each created independently and
were not reconciled with the top-down finance projections. The forecasts were also
performed at different planning levels. For example, the production forecast was managed at
the plant level while the sales and market forecasts were planned regionally, around the
world.
The company explored a variety of solution providers but only one, Steelwedge, could solve
the unique challenges associated with the automotive industry.
Using Steelwedge’s integrated S&OP platform, the company can:
Optimize the allocation of production to markets, centrally and/or regionally.
Develop collaborative forecasting to achieve a consensus operations strategy and plan.
Integrate third parties, such as importers, dealers and suppliers,
into a common planning process.
Monitor key metrics and automatically produce company-specific reports.
Leverage investment in existing systems of record; acting as a system of differentiation.