Successful Manufacturers Proactively Plan for Year-End

As we close in on year-end, successful manufacturers are focused on executing proactive plans. Skeleton crews are expected over the holiday season. Proactive manufacturers planned in advance, approved overtime, re-routed labor to hot spots, hired on temporary talent, took advantage of predictive demand and supply plans with SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning), and rolled out automation, artificial intelligence, and advanced technologies to ensure customer needs would be met. Reactive companies will start the year with past due backlogs, frustrated customers, and non-optimal operations challenged to start the year with zero momentum. The strong are accelerating the pace and separating from the weak and will be left in the dust as the ability to scale, provide customer value and gain EBITDA become the “name of the game” in 2026.

Clients are also focused on year-end inventory and revenues. Since you are only as strong as your weakest link in today’s global supply chain, if your customer pulls back to make year-end inventory goals, it will impact the end-to-end supply chain and your revenues will dip. Hopefully you expected this impact with your SIOP process and have pre-planned appropriately. If your supplier shuts down for the holiday season and/or has several high-skilled resources on vacation for a prolonged period and pre-planning didn’t occur, you are likely to incur shortages and negatively impact customers. Additionally, if you haven’t integrated Finance into your SIOP process with inventory projections, cash planning and debt covenants could be impacted. Undoubtedly, proactive and innovative companies will be far ahead of the competition for 2026. To learn about additional strategies to optimize with SIOP, download our complimentary eBook, SIOP: Creating Predictable Revenue and EBITDA Growth.

Proactive Planning To the Rescue

Proactive planning yields vast results, not just for year-end but for every business cycle. It has become more important than ever before due to the sheer volume of disruptions and heightened risk levels. For example, Xeneta, a freight intelligence platform reported that “the lights on the geopolitical dashboard are still flashing red” in its “2026 Ocean Outlook” report. Xeneta noted that those flashpoints have the potential to disrupt major trade lanes from the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait with little warning. End-to-end supply chain impacts would be significant as container ships have to reroute, transit times increase, and manufacturers and consumers are disrupted.

The Nexperia debacle continues to disrupt supply chains. Read more about it in our recent article, “Strategies to Move Supply Chains from Global to Local with Resiliency.” It is in the news as Honda shuts down plants in China and Japan due to a lack of computer chips. Proactive planning must account for the full end-to-end supply chain from your suppliers’ suppliers to your customers’ customers. It is no longer simple. Instead of looking for the lowest cost with the expected delivery schedule, you must dive deep into your supply chain, natural resource implications, and other potential supply chain disruptions. Advanced technologies such as crowdsourcing are incorporated into supply chain visibility software options that can predict the most likely disruptions and advanced planning systems embedded with artificial intelligence and digital twins that can perform what if scenarios and predictive optimization.

Proactive Planning Strategies

There are many options to utilize proactive planning strategies. Strategies can range from the foundational to advanced strategies. Both can work equally as well. In fact, several foundational strategies go underappreciated. On the other hand, to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving world, you’ll need both to succeed.

At the core, SIOP is the driver for proactive planning. Supporting SIOP includes several proactive planning concepts including the following:

• Sales forecasting (demand planning): Nothing matters if you cannot predict revenue and customer needs proactively. Utilizing common sense questions, basic trends, CRM tools and advanced sales forecasting functionality can achieve significant better results than your competition. Since it all starts with the customer, focus attention with this priority.
• MRP (Material requirements planning): Utilizing MRP to automate what to make and buy at the right time in the right place is essential to success. Read our best of production and MRP planning articles here.
• Advanced planning (APS): Predicting incoming materials and supplies, improving estimated dates with supply chain visibility technologies, assessing optimal production plans and allocation of products and/or volumes across sites, and much more can be accomplished with advanced planning
• Capacity planning (CRP): Capacity planning is essential so that you can plan resources, talent, equipment, invest in the appropriate training and development plans, etc.
• Inventory, cash flow and capital planning: If you don’t have the funds to support your plans, nothing else will matter. Thus, utilizing SIOP to project inventory, proactively optimize inventory levels, determine the optimal capital plans with supporting ROI (return on investment) figures is key to success.
• Logistics & warehousing planning (WMS): Many clients utilize WMS and advanced technologies to predict space requirements, plan future building requirements, optimize storage and movements, and ensure efficiency and effectiveness in serving customers.
• Transportation planning (TMS): Whether e-commerce and package intensive, multi-stop or less-than-truckload carriers, ocean freight or rail, TMS will optimize routes, select transportation providers, consider resource limitations and incorporate predictive insights and visibility effects.

Artificial intelligence is at the core of many of these advanced technologies. To learn about how AI can drive manufacturing and supply chain success, download our eBook, How AI Powers Smart Supply Chains and Smarter Decisions. With that said, using common sense will go a long way when it comes to proactive planning. Find out what is going on around the world, deep dive into critical impacts such as the need for energy and critical minerals and rare earths, and collaborate with your supply chain partners. Creative solutions and strategic partnerships are winning the day in supply chain circles. Innovate for success and utilize proactive planning strategies to drive customer value and bottom-line results.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Maximizing Performance and Margins with SIOP