Page 113 -

Production and Supply Chain Management Information Systems
The authors provide an example of how sales and operations planning could
impact the supply and demand of a particular blood product, single-donor platelets
(SDPs). As with any business, a blood center must quickly identify variations in
forecasted supply and demand and take action to lessen the potential negative effects
of those variations. For instance, if the demand for SDPs at a blood center falls below 93
projections, “the excess SDPs may be exported if they have sufficient shelf life
remaining, or donors may be rescheduled to reduce supply. If SDP demand spikes,
recruitment and collections may have to work overtime to recruit more donors.”
Blood banks may not be for-profit companies, but they cannot operate at a loss
either. The authors note that an advantage of a sales and operations planning process is
that it requires performance measurement. By using measurements, such as RONA
(return on net assets), a blood center can help blood centers avoid situations in which
“the cost per unit (CPU) collected is higher than the sales cost of a unit to the health
care provider or what an imported unit would cost.”
One of the major challenges to applying the sales and operations planning process to
blood banks is data accuracy. The authors note that it is not uncommon to have data
inconsistencies between the blood management system and the financial system.
Without accurate and consistent data, the results of the sales and operations planning
process would not be valid.
Question:
1. Write a memo to the director of a blood donation center in your geographic
area recommending the implementation of the sales and operations planning
process to their blood banking system. Explain the benefits of such a system,
and make sure that you identify and address arguments that might be made
against your proposal. Specifically address the issue of performance measures
in a nonprofit environment.

Disaggregating the Sales and Operations Plan in SAP ERP
As mentioned previously, companies typically develop sales and operations plans for
product groups. Product groups are especially important for companies that have
hundreds of products, because developing unique plans for hundreds of individual
products is extremely time consuming. Furthermore, it would be hard to develop that
many different plans in a coordinated fashion while also taking in consideration
production capacity. Fitter’s product group is very simple; 70 percent of the group consists
of NRG-A bars, and 30 percent consists of NRG-B bars.
Figure 4-11 shows how product groups are defined in the SAP ERP system. The
system allows any number of products to be assigned to a product group. Product groups
can have other product groups as members, as well, so complicated aggregations can be
defined.

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.