S&OP building blocks

Based on a systematic literature review, Thomé et al. [10] offer an S&OP framework that contributes to an S&OP design understanding. It synthesises the main building blocks and design parameters of S&OP [35] and contemplates vertical and horizontal alignments systematically and holistically [36]. It is consistent with Kathuria et al. [37], where vertical alignment bridges strategy to operations, while horizontal alignment refers to cross-functional integration. Fig 1 depicts the S&OP framework with the main building blocks, which are described next.

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Fig 1. S&OP building blocks (Adapted from Thomé et al. [10]).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257572.g001

The main building blocks of S&OP are context, business and corporate plans, inputs, structure and processes, outcomes, and results. Context refers to the enterprise’s operating environment. It embraces aspects such as geographic region, industry type, manufacturing strategy, product-process matrix, product aggregation level, hierarchical planning, and planning horizon [10]. The context-based nature of S&OP is relevant and has been highlighted in the literature (e.g., [16, 38, 39]), making it a relevant building block for the S&OP comprehension. The Business Plan of the framework is the company’s highest planning level, encompassing the corporate Strategic Plan [10]. Inputs to the S&OP process include functional business areas’ plans, forecasts, capacities, and constraints. The outcome is the integration of different plans into a single one, reconciling the plans horizontally from diverse functional areas and ensuring vertical alignment between the company’s strategic plan and operations [7, 40, 41]. The expected main result is profit optimisation [42].

Structure and Processes is the central building block, being the core of S&OP, transforming inputs into outputs. It is composed of four design parameters: meeting and collaboration, organisation, information technology (IT) and metrics [10, 35]. Meeting and collaboration evaluate the effectiveness of the human component in the S&OP process [42], including participants, collaboration and trust, and cycle meetings. Organisation comprises the structure to execute the process, including the establishment of a cross-functional team, agenda, and process steps. IT refers to software, interfaces, hardware, and communication systems used to support the process execution. Metrics covers all key performance indicators (KPIs) and measurement procedures used to monitor results and continuous improvements in the operations area and the overall business, as well as the S&OP dashboards, including measuring the process management itself and its effects on corporate effectiveness and efficiency [43]. S&OP effectiveness measures can be related to forecasting accuracy, resource adherence (e.g., capacity capability, inventory), trade-off measures (cross-functionality with demand plan vs production plan and alignment with strategy and reward system), plans adherence and actual vs target [41].

Thomé et al.´s [10] framework evolved from Grimson and Pyke´s [42] S&OP maturity model. It is considered an “integrative framework” [16], that describes S&OP as a whole and not as a partial process [36], being generalisable and not restricted to specific contexts [15]. Lately, the framework was adapted for the coordination mechanisms [7], other supply chain integration practices, such as CPFR [44], a multiple case study of the food industry in North Europe [35], metrics [41], process industries [15], teaching cases in Operations Management [21], a context-based S&OP framework [16], and recently in a case study in the chemical industry in South America [24].

S&OP process steps: From local to global scope

On a local scale, the S&OP process is usually performed in a monthly planning cycle embracing the following five steps [26]: data gathering, demand planning, supply planning, pre-meeting, and executive meeting. These five steps are observed in a majority of S&OP studies (e.g., [11, 40, 42, 43]), and are discussed next.

Data Gathering (step one) occurs when the month results are closed [11] and the company’s information system (e.g., Enterprise Resource Planning—ERP) is fed with data from different functional business areas. Demand Planning (step two) is when sales and marketing teams review historical data and the sales forecast, include the impact of new product launches, advertisement and promotions and other trade initiatives to generate the unconstrained demand plan. Supply Planning (step three) is when the demand plan received from step two is simulated, including capacity constraints [42] and inventory figures [10]. Representatives from operations (e.g., production, logistics, research and development—R&D) work together in this step [10].

Pre-meeting (step four) is when representatives from different functional business areas (e.g., sales, marketing, and operations) discuss the gaps between demand needs and constrained supply capacities. They work together to develop mitigation plans to solve the problems [40] and prepare a financial review [31]. The agreed S&OP plan proposal with a financial analysis and the unresolved issues and trade-offs that need senior managers’ decisions are taken to the executive meeting (step five). Company’s senior managers and executives take part in step five: (i) to approve the pre-meeting S&OP plan or choose another course of action; (ii) to authorise changes in production rates or supply costs that go beyond S&OP team autonomy; (iii) to analyse and compare the financial S&OP plan vs Business Plan (budget) and to decide which adjustments are needed; (iv) to resolve pending issues without agreement from the Pre-meeting and any other relevant issues raised; and (v) to review KPIs, projects’ progress, product launches and to make decisions [26].

However, competition in global operations, supply chains and markets [4, 6] makes the implementation and execution of a single S&OP process for an entire multinational corporation unsuitable [34, 35]. As multinational manufacturing companies embrace several subsidiaries in different countries with large-scale supply chains, they require the consolidation and integration of the different S&OP plans worldwide [28–31]. Additionally, within their geographic growth, corporations face the so-called “fight over decision rights” among their headquarters with global functions and their subsidiaries with similar local functions in specific countries [31]. Thus, the S&OP process sometimes needs to be divided up according to certain criteria (e.g., region, country, business unit, and product line) that fits the company [20, 29] and then it has to be consolidated to: (i) harmonise the integration of plans worldwide [29]; (ii) ensure vertical alignment and allow global visibility [24]; and (iii) achieve the organisation’s global strategy [25, 29]. This consolidation is the extension from a local to a global S&OP [28]. Within this context, there may be two additional steps for the S&OP process in global corporations: global roll-up and global executive meeting [24, 26].

In the global roll-up (sixth step), S&OP information from subsidiaries or business units worldwide is consolidated. Organisation’s most senior executives as the chief executive officer (CEO), chief operations officer (COO), chief financial officer (CFO), other chief officers (C-suite), plus regional or divisional presidents, and global vice presidents meet at the global executive meeting (seventh step). They analyse the consolidated information, KPIs, financial results, global projects advancements, relevant issues and make decisions [26]. Within steps six and seven, the S&OP planning horizon is extended and tends to merge with the multi-year strategic plan of global corporations [39]. This extension of the time horizon and the participation of the C-Suite, aligned with the integration in the supply chain, tend to confer to S&OP a strategic role in the company [45, 46].

Fig 2 depicts these process steps, following Wallace and Stahl’s [26] framework that embraces the traditional five steps and introduces the two additional steps for consolidated global planning.

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Fig 2. S&OP local and global process steps (Adapted from Wallace and Stahl [26]).

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The first five steps have been analysed and explored in different empirical studies offered in the S&OP literature (e.g., [11, 40, 42]). Although steps six and seven have been presented in the literature (e.g., [26, 45]), they have not been the scope from scholars in investigations within real-life settings [20, 24], leaving a research gap to be investigated [19], which is addressed within this paper.

Case selection

The study adopted a purposive sampling aiming at exploring an exemplar case of a single embedded case study design [47]. Exemplar companies adopting and documenting S&OP global process steps [26] are useful to explore new processes and benchmarking opportunities (e.g. [48]). The case company studied within this research is a global manufacturer that has been implementing a standardised S&OP process across all subsidiaries, including the two (embedded) sub-units in Brazil and Mexico. The company’s successful global S&OP program offers a unit of choice for an exemplar case providing an exclusive arena for the research.

Unit of analysis and its motivation

The unit of analysis is the S&OP global roll-up and global executive meeting steps in the two embedded subunits (the Brazilian and Mexican subsidiaries). Four main criteria guided the choice of subunits. First, the S&OP processes in the two locations are representative of the global S&OP implementation company-wide, thus conferring conceptual representativeness to the sample [47]. Second, both subsidiaries have an established S&OP process with the traditional five-step cycle approach and an integration of their processes with the headquarters (sixth and seventh steps). Third, these subsidiaries are the most significant operations in Latin America, contributing together with more than 70% of the regional revenue. Fourth, Mexico and Brazil are the two biggest countries regarding territory, population, gross domestic product, and market size in the region, conferring additional relevance to the study of S&OP in global operations in emerging markets. The choice of a single case allows for more in-depth analysis [49] but it is also acknowledged as a limitation for testable theory elaboration, as it might result in limited external validity of single-case research [47, 50, 51]. The inconvenience of single-case research is somehow diminished by the fact it contains two “mini-cases” embedded (Brazilian and Mexican subsidiaries). The use of embedded units in single-case research is an attenuating factor for single-case research limitations in theory elaboration research, as indicated earlier by Dyer and Wilkins [51] in a rebuttal to Eisenhardt [50].

Data collection

During the data collection, all institutional and individual data were anonymised to protect confidentiality, in accordance with recognised practices to protect human subjects and third parties for anonymity and confidentiality. For this reason, there will not be a disclosure of the case study database to the public domain. Additional relevant information could be disclosed on an as-needed basis upon request to the corresponding author. Verbal and written informed consents were given by personnel involved in the research. The appropriate STROBE guidelines for observational studies were followed to ensure transparency. The extensive field research to collect information consisted of interviews, direct observations, internal documents, and public data from the company. A semi-structured questionnaire was designed to support the interviews [47], adapted from Manuj and Sahin [52], which is presented in S1 Appendix. Interviews were conducted face-to-face following a protocol and questionnaire (approximately one hour to one hour and a half each). The questions were a guide to ensure that all topics of interest were covered. Although some questions had a yes/no format, interviewees were prompted to explain their answers further. Additional questions were made when necessary. Open-ended interviews were scheduled to complement and clarify the information obtained when needed. Whenever an interview revealed any contradictory data, the authors of this paper went back to the respondents to understand the fact aiming to achieve consensus. Data collected included meeting minutes, KPI dashboards, meeting calendars and attendance lists, action plans, meeting presentations, ERP system reports, and S&OP audit documents, among others. In addition to the interviews, the researchers had access to the subsidiaries and headquarters sites and personnel, including meeting attendance and day-to-day observation of the activities, allowing an in-depth study of the phenomena.

In total, 18 executives were interviewed: nine from Brazil, eight from Mexico and one from the headquarters in the USA. In Brazil, the interviews covered the functions of supply and S&OP manager, supply planner, demand planning and sales administration manager, sales director, supply chain director, manufacturing director, production planning manager, finance manager, and general manager. In Mexico, the interviews covered the functions of S&OP managers (two managers, each one responsible for different product lines), sales director, supply manager, purchasing planner, financial planning manager, supply chain director, and general manager. Interviews with the global S&OP leader happened during his visits to the subsidiaries and complemented by e-mail, and by phone calls.

Direct observation was also an important instrument for collecting data with one of the researchers taking part in the meetings of the S&OP process steps in both subsidiaries. The observational guideline adopted for data collection and analysis is presented in Table 1 in S2 Appendix. Field observations covered at least one year and a half in Brazil and two years in Mexico, comprising the period of global implementation when procedures were standardised, subsidiaries’ personnel were trained, and routine S&OP procedures were audited.

Reliability and validity

Research reliability was strengthened with the use of a fieldwork protocol for interviews and direct observation, consistent with Yin’s [47] guidelines. Documents and internal reports were also verified and analysed as evidence of the practices performed in the subsidiaries. Validity checks and triangulations were accomplished by comparing answers from interviews with different professionals with field observation notes, internal documents, and comprehensive public data from the company.

Data analysis

Theoretical replication using a pattern-matching technique [53, 54] was adopted for the analysis. Consistent with Almutari et al. [55], the pattern-matching technique embraced the phases of (i) stating the expected patterns based on the theoretical S&OP frameworks identified; (ii) testing the empirically found patterns for each S&OP design parameter in all steps of the process; (iii) providing advancements of the original theory and developing research outcomes as regularities and contrasts between theory and observation. The regularities and contrasts of the global S&OP process in the subsidiaries and corporate headquarters were systematically analysed, guided by the two identified S&OP frameworks. Wallace and Stahl’s [26] framework was applied to analyse how the process steps are conducted to move from a local to a global S&OP scale. Thomé et al.’s [10] framework aided in obtaining an S&OP understanding through analysing the main building blocks and design parameters. The combined use of these two frameworks enabled to answer the two research questions. The obtained research findings are synthesised into a novel framework and contribute to the elaboration and development of theory on global S&OP [32, 33].

Demand planning

In both subsidiaries, sales and marketing personnel generate the demand plan at aggregate and SKU levels with an 18-month horizon. The plan is translated into financial figures. Sales and marketing aim to deliver the committed budget. Marketing provides new product development (NPD) and promotion information and reviews the portfolio of products. Demand planning occupies part of the marketing and sales meeting held in the first week of the month, during which the S&OP managers in each subsidiary make a presentation covering historical data and KPIs (e.g., excess and obsolete inventory, product availability and sales lost, forecast accuracy and service levels), and review the meeting minutes. In Brazil, there are four sales directors responsible for different product lines. The demand planning & sales administration manager and his team generate the forecast by SKU, using dedicated software. Inputs gathered from sales and marketing (e.g., new product launches and promotions) are also included to produce the unconstrained demand plan. The forecast accuracy has been around 80% consistently. Factors favouring results are a broad portfolio, a large client basis, the usage of a demand planning tool by skilled professionals and the coordination performed by the demand planning & sales administration manager. The supply manager in Brazil is also the S&OP manager. He attends the demand meeting, receives the unconstrained demand plan from the demand planning & sales administration manager and takes it to the supply team.

In Mexico, five sales directors are responding to different product lines and distribution channels in a hybrid system. Two S&OP managers prepare the forecast by SKU, using spreadsheets, based on historical data from the ERP. During the demand meeting, they confirm the plan by SKU and by value with sales and marketing teams to produce the unconstrained demand plan. Forecast accuracy has improved but still struggles around 60%. The Mexican subsidiary has had challenges to deliver the budget and has impacted forecast accuracy and inventory planning due to unplanned sales initiatives. During this research, the S&OP managers were moved from the operations to sales, replicating the Brazilian structure. They became demand planning & sales administration managers, responsible for building the demand plan and its follow-up. The positive impact of this change was the increase in the demand plan ownership from sales. The outcome of the S&OP process, in both subsidiaries, was an unconstrained demand plan.

Supply planning

In both subsidiaries, the unconstrained demand plan is the main input to supply planning. The supply meeting is held in the second week of the month with the presence of the supply chain director. During this meeting, respectively the Brazilian supply and S&OP manager and the Mexicans demand planning and S&OP managers make a presentation of historical data and KPIs (e.g., resource adherence). The supply capacities are previously simulated. In the meeting, the feasible supply plan and alternatives to mitigate gaps are costed out and discussed. The supply plan is translated into financial figures. The supply team seeks to deliver the budget, while finance may be asked to assess and approve mitigation plans involving extra costs going beyond the decision-making autonomy of the functional managers. In Brazil, the supply and S&OP manager with his team is responsible for coordinating the supply plan construction. They provide to two local plants a production master plan to be simulated and a sourcing plan that takes into account inventories on-hands, in-transit, and the inventory policy. The production planners use a Material Requirement Planning (MRP) system to generate purchasing and production orders. In the biggest plant (a thousand employees, hundreds of machines, thousands of SKUs), an advanced planning system is applied for simulations, in production scheduling, and shop floor control. The smaller plant (half a dozen machines, around 20 employees, less than a hundred SKUs) uses MRP and spreadsheets to plan and control. The production planners work together with local purchasing sector and international commerce sector to confirm raw material and packaging material availability. The supply and S&OP manager also works together with the international commerce sector to confirm with global suppliers the new orders acceptance, the current orders status and the expected arrival dates of finished goods. The Mexican supply plan is a sourcing plan. The supply manager and his team work together with the international commerce sector to confirm with suppliers the acceptance of new orders and status and expected arrival dates of the current ones. The supply team generates a sourcing plan based on inventory on-hands and in-transit, considering inventory policies by SKU.

The outcome of this step is a constrained supply plan (by SKUs and value). Gaps to deliver the demand plan are identified with respective mitigation plan proposals when approval is beyond the autonomy of the functional managers’ decision-making.

Pre-meeting

In both subsidiaries, this step usually does not include a formal meeting. It involves the participants from the previous steps and finance representatives in decisions associated with supply and demand gaps and mitigation plans during the third week of the month. In Brazil, the supply and S&OP manager talks to the demand planning and sales administration manager to communicate the supply plan with the best efforts to mitigate all gaps as well as the potential downsides by SKU. Exhaustive conversations are held before this point with manufacturing plants and suppliers to deliver the demand plan. Alternative measures that go beyond the supply team’s and supply chain director’s autonomy are taken to the executive meeting. In Mexico, the supply manager has a similar conversation with demand planning and S&OP managers. Metrics in this step embrace cross-functional trade-off measures (demand vs production and strategic and tactical alignment). As in the other steps, there are transparency, commitment, trust, and collaborative spirit among all the functional business areas involved, which empowers S&OP in the company. The outcome of this step is an S&OP proposal (by SKUs and value) with financial analysis, unresolved trade-offs, and mitigation plans.

Executive meeting

The executive meeting is performed in both subsidiaries with the presence of the general manager and directors. The focus is on the S&OP proposal evaluation, authorisation of changes, evaluation of financial S&OP plan vs business plan (budget), and decision-making. There is a business review in the last week of the month, and the executive meeting takes part of its time. During this step, the supply and S&OP manager in Brazil and the demand planning and S&OP managers in Mexico present the S&OP plan proposal in units per SKU and value, with an 18-month horizon. The S&OP plan is compared to the budget with a risk analysis, seeking to deliver the revenues committed with the headquarters. When plan and budget do not match, the focus moves directly to analyse the recommended alternatives to close the gaps for approval. Even though the objective is analysing the following months, the current month is also discussed. As part of the presentation, KPIs are reviewed, focusing on plans adherence (e.g., supply vs demand; S&OP finance vs financial plan and budget). Four sales directors, a supply chain director, two manufacturing directors, three marketing directors, one human resources director, one finance director and the general manager, compose the Brazilian management team. In Mexico, the management team is composed of five sales directors, one trade-marketing director, two marketing directors, one human resources director, one supply chain director, one finance director, and the general manager. In addition to the management team, the S&OP managers in each subsidiary and special invitees, attend the executive meeting. The outcome is the approved S&OP plan for the subsidiary, which is shared with the headquarters in the USA.

The two subsidiaries have launched hundreds of SKUs every year and increased the customer basis to grow their businesses. The Mexican subsidiary overcomes two merger processes in a short period. During the mergers, turnover was high, two local manufacturing plants were closed, and the entire portfolio became imported. The extensive observations indicate that S&OP has been key to manage the complexity and dynamic changes in both subsidiaries. Local results have revealed direct gains as profit increase as well as a successful integration of plans among the different functional areas and vertical and horizontal alignment.

Global roll-up

This step is coordinated by the global S&OP leader, a director from headquarters responsible for deploying and standardising the process worldwide. Within this step, information from the subsidiaries is gathered, consolidated, and analysed, which is then included in an executive report for the global executive meeting. The report indicates local gains in the subsidiaries (e.g., improved inventory management, forecast accuracy, cost reduction, service level increase, among others) as well as their implementation progress, best practices, and KPIs. There is a standard set of KPIs that all subsidiaries worldwide have to keep track and report: perfect orders, line fill, forecast accuracy, distribution and transportation costs, inventory value (gross, raw material, work in progress, excess and obsolete), inventory turns, inventory days-on-hands, total SKU count, SKU ABC curve and the company’s S&OP assessment score. The S&OP assessment score measures the adherence to the multinational manufacturing company’s standard S&OP process each subsidiary’s process achieved and is determined in periodic audits. These metrics are presented in a scorecard and are shared with the corporate headquarters periodically, during global roll-up. KPIs and best practices are also shared among the subsidiaries, providing an additional gain for local operations, as also pointed out in Basu [28] and Lapide [29], and are used to orient trainings and workshops with the subsidiaries.

Global executive meeting

In this final process step, the decision-making moves up to the C-Suite and global executives. Therefore, the whole process becomes more focused on strategic issues, as foreseen in VICS [45] and in Baumann [46], such as the balance of capacities and portfolio of products beyond countries and business units’ frontiers. This meeting aims to monitor and analyse the subsidiaries S&OP performance worldwide on a monthly base as well as to support and evaluate the S&OP global deployment. Best practices, local gains, and KPIs are discussed, and business opportunities are identified, resulting in decision-making and requests for additional information or corrective action plans if problems, conflicts and non-expected results are identified. The possibility to understand the big global picture and make decisions accordingly is considered by the C-Suite as a source to obtain competitive advantage. It aims to build a broad customer portfolio attending global demand and supply, which allows the company to switch volumes when product sales drop in one region or to find production or sourcing capacity to explore new markets, to maintain profitability. This is in line with Thomas et al. [56] regarding successful manufacturing organisations.

The global results achieved with the S&OP process in the multinational company were synthesised by its global S&OP executive leader as: (i) harmonise the integration of plans worldwide, (ii) ensure vertical alignment and allow global visibility and (iii) achieve the organisation´s global strategy.

Challenges for the global S&OP

The global S&OP implementation results are considered satisfactory within the multinational manufacturing company. However, the company is facing different challenges that need to be surpassed to reach the full benefits of global gains. The company faces difficulties of gathering S&OP information in a comparable format from around 50 countries with many subsidiaries using different systems (software and versions). The data gathering and its consolidation have been a severe challenge and an issue not completely resolved yet. Different ERP systems and versions are running in the countries, and part of the information has to be edited and consolidated manually in spreadsheets before each subsidiary sends it to the headquarters. This jeopardises the accuracy of the information, especially when it comes from small subsidiaries. The company’s S&OP manual supports the data harmonisation, as it shows which KPIs to use, how they are calculated, and examples of presentation formats. However, due to a lack of personnel and training, it is not always completely followed. The company has recognised the inadequacy of their information systems to be a central problem of their global S&OP. Therefore, it currently aims to integrate its worldwide information systems within a process of bringing together all sub-systems to deliver the intended functionality, similar as described in Ghobakhloo [57]. To get the benefits from their implementation, the existing management systems and standard processes ought to be integrated into a single system, in a sense discussed in Zutshi and Sohal [58]. The company has decided to implement one ERP as a worldwide standard, which is seen as an enabler for the processes to get standardised and the information to become more reliable and timely available.

Moreover, a challenge lies in the interpretation and use of the information gathered within the global S&OP process. The amount of detailed information available to review is vast, and the headquarters aims to avoid a “data overload” [31], as the C-suite does not want to micromanage the subsidiaries. The company rather sees its global S&OP information as an opportunity to get a worldwide picture that facilitates the development of strategic initiatives to improve the overall business. Herein, a particular challenge lies in the comparison of results from the various subsidiaries due to their different S&OP maturity stages (e.g., while some subsidiaries are running their S&OP effectively, others are still struggling to implement the first stages) and differences in terms of their infrastructure, size, and complexity. To illustrate the problem, Brazil and Mexico, each one considered alone, are bigger businesses than all the other countries in Latin America together. At the same time, the USA’s sales are more than ten times the entire Latin America regional sales. Brazil has a country size comparable to the USA and a similar number of customers but, instead of shipping full truckloads as in the USA, the Brazilian order profile is similar to United Kingdom’s, primarily small and medium orders, less than a truckload. Some subsidiaries have manufacturing plants and carry inventory to export for a transference cost while small subsidiaries are just commercial units selling profit margins and carrying a low inventory. Furthermore, smaller subsidiaries, scarce in resources, have difficulties to generate the information for their S&OP KPI dashboard. The information from their local S&OP process is not entirely reliable with frequent miscalculations leading to misinterpretations. Additional challenges that make it difficult to compare the subsidiaries’ performances are related to reporting standards within global, large-scale supply chains. For instance, subsidiaries with local plants also carry extra inventory (raw materials, work in progress, and finished goods) to supply other regions. They are responsible for production and inventory costs, but export to the destiny subsidiary for a transfer price. The profit appears in the result of the subsidiary that imports, which has a leaner structure when it sells in its local market. The challenges to consolidate the subsidiaries’ results globally demonstrate the importance of considering this financial perspective within the global S&OP.

The studied company views the implementation of the global S&OP process as a permanent learning effort. It is continuously elaborating how the global executive meeting should deal best with the challenges noticed above. Nevertheless, it is considered essential that the C-suite demonstrates the importance of the global S&OP process for the company by dedicating time, attention, and sponsorship to it. This is seen as more important than understanding in depth the details, which are mainly handled by executives in the subsidiaries locally.

Global results

Steps six and seven of the global S&OP have been important to monitor the S&OP implementation progress in each subsidiary on a regular basis. The company developed a standard S&OP KPI dashboard, which is used by the subsidiaries worldwide. Every subsidiary has to report its results monthly, using performance indicators that are calculated in the same way. The KPIs cover different aspects such as costs, service levels, inventory data, forecast accuracy, and the S&OP assessment grade. Best practices and local gains are also reported within the global roll-up step. These global reports are shared and have generated valuable insights that resulted in benchmarking possibilities among subsidiaries. Benchmarking was not expected and planned in the original global S&OP project, but was considered an opportunity to be explored and a beneficial outcome of the global process. For instance, best practices of superior performance subsidiaries could be identified by assessing their forecast accuracy, service level, and S&OP assessment score. Moreover, advanced comparisons among portfolios of products in the different regions have become possible. Although corporate marketing had been working with the local subsidiaries’ teams already to explore opportunities related to portfolio management among regions, the global S&OP process now makes this information available to the C-suite periodically. The same applies to the current spare capacity analysis by corporate operations at local levels, which is now discussed more often at headquarters’ global meetings. Facilitated by the global S&OP, the corporate headquarters and subsidiaries are learning how to handle external and internal benchmarking, as envisioned in Basu [28], setting up performance improvement initiatives, and obtaining synergies with other management initiative and practices, as anticipated in VICS [45]. Although not being part of the global executive meeting discussion, the additional synergies facilitate the alignment of local and global expectations, reducing the “fight over decision rights” presented in Alexander [31] among the global headquarters and the local subsidiaries. For instance, the global sourcing team in the headquarters is now using data from the S&OP of the subsidiaries to analyse global versus local procurement.

Moreover, global S&OP related project to implement one ERP as the company’s global standard created several synergy effects within the company. By sharing the same ERP system worldwide, the company advanced towards the complete integration of its units, standardising processes around the world, and automating reports and KPIs’ calculation. Another synergy is associated with the analysis of the company’s different business units, which are composed by the related family of products with similar characteristics and brands. The business units have representatives in the subsidiaries regionally and globally at the headquarters, looking specifically at product lines and brands. The business units can now utilise information from the global S&OP to help build their strategies and develop targets, projects, and action plans.

The C-suite is seeing several gains from the global roll-up, as envisaged in Lapide [29] and Seeling et al. [24] for global S&OP regarding the “harmonisation” of plans among different subsidiaries and the increased visibility of the global operations. Locations with excess and obsolete products and plants with high spare capacities, affecting the return on assets, are brought to the attention of the C-suite, provoking reactions and speeding the development of solutions. Requests for assessments about plant capacity constraints and opportunities to increase portfolios in new countries and questions about service level issues are addressed with priority by the subsidiaries as the C-suite now sees them and can facilitate their implementation. The global S&OP provides the C-suite with a more holistic view, enabling to analyse the total company results and initiating global actions for change. This, for instance, allows to shift production capacities among the subsidiaries according to the organisation’s global strategy, as envisioned in Lapide [29] and Nemati et al. [25]. Furthermore, the global view implies strategic implications for S&OP that are not observed in local approaches limited to the first five cycle steps. Decisions affecting a strategic planning horizon have gained more attention in the Brazilian and Mexican subsidiaries’ S&OP, as now the local executives know that they are being reported to the company’s headquarters. Regional vice-presidents, directors, and functional managers are now questioning S&OP results more frequently, and extraordinary results are noticed and discussed.