Orchid Employee Publishes an Article with Journal of Business Forecasting

Orchid Orthopedic Solutions (Orchid) is a medical device partner with 11 facilities worldwide that provide products and services for orthopedic procedures. We provide end-to-end solutions to the orthopedic and medical device industry, including established Original Equipment Manufacturers.

Orchid’s integrated business planning (IBP) journey started five years ago. We started off slowly rolling out New Product Introduction (NPI), Demand Planning, Supply Planning, and this year, Executive Review steps. We have a monthly cadence that starts with our Project Management Office providing NPI forecasts to our demand planning process. Demand planning consolidates all known demand information including NPI, customer forecasts, customer and sales team communications, market intelligence and 15 months of sales history including current open orders. This consolidated information is fed into a demand planning software tool (developed in-house) where demand analysts create the demand forecast for the next 24-month period. A consensus meeting is held for each facility to gain alignment on the forecast being presented. Once aligned, the forecast is given to the Supply Planning team to use it to create capacity, headcount and material plans for the 24-month period. Finally, all the work is presented at the Executive Review where key decisions are made on the direction to take.

To learn how COVID impacted our IBP process, the solutions we implented and our challenges, read the full article here. 

This article originally appeared in Journal of Business Forecasting