Miller Magazine Issue: 154 October 2022

68 COVER STORY MILLER / OCTOBER 2022 Okan Akgun Partner at Value Gene Consulting Group Ozan Ozaskinli Partner at Value Gene Consulting Group Nihan Siriklioglu Project Manager at Value Gene Consulting Group Today, leading companies who already adopted S&OP and S&OE are putting their focus on digitalization of their S&OP and S&OE processes with data and analyt- ics driven technologies. A digital S&OP and S&OE can bring much better long- term visibility, enables end-to-end dynamic business planning, and substantially increase the operational efficiency and effectiveness. Streamline your milling operations by transforming how you plan In today’s world, it is not enough to save “the today, this week or next week”, as flour business is getting more com- plex every day. The ability to think long term is more critical than ever. Effective long-term planning creates enormous benefits to the companies’ topline and leads to significant operational efficiency and effectiveness, particularly when it is combined with data analytics and digital tools. That’s why, Digital S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) is becoming vital for the organizations to stay ahead of competition and streamline their operations while being ready for future. Flour milling business is more complex than ever Flour business is not a stable business anymore. In the last 5 years, complexity has significantly increased, and the pandemic boosted complexity even more. Shift in de- mand is much faster and challenges in supply chain are way beyond the expectations. On demand side, consumer preferences are shifting towards healthier options such as organic wheat, ancient grains, and pulses. Food applications once relying primar- ily on wheat flour are being re-invented with alternative grain types. Despite this long-term shift in preferences, inflation is now forcing consumers to trade down and in- crease their demand for lower priced options. In addition, Covid-19 triggered swift changes in where consumption is happening (at home vs out of home). Thus, flour demand of different milling customer segments shifted unexpect- edly in the last two years. On the other hand, number of supply issues have emerged. Price increases in grains, changes in wheat sup- ply routes, labor availability, truck shortages are all factors increasing supply challenges. We do not expect these changes and challenges to van- ish in the short-term; consumer preferences will continue to evolve and supply chain challenges will not be resolved soon. Therefore, it will be important to develop the best-in- class planning capabilities for milling companies. How data-driven planning leads to operational efficiency There is certainly a need to establish a structured ap- proach for short-term and long-term planning and ensure milling companies are ready for opportunities and risks in the market. There is already a bullet-proof concept called S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) and S&OE (Sales and Operations Execution) that are widely used in leading consumer goods and manufacturing companies. On the other hand, milling industry is still in process of adopting