S&OP Meeting Pack: Agenda, Data Inputs, Scenario Template & Decision Rules

Purpose

This pack helps cross-functional teams run an effective S&OP / IBP meeting that aligns demand, supply and finance with clear, documented decisions and owners. Use it to reduce surprises, protect service, and make balanced trade-offs between inventory, cash and customer commitments.

What's included

• Recommended meeting cadence, roles and a compact agenda
• Validated data checklist with suggested fields and formats for each data owner
• Simple scenario-testing template (base / upside / downside) and comparison guidance
• Cross-functional decision rules and a decision matrix you can adapt
• Meeting outputs template (decisions, owners, actions) and a pre-meeting checklist

Meeting cadence & purpose

• Operational Review (weekly): Rapid status of execution — exceptions, capacity, near-term changes requiring action.
• S&OP / IBP Review (monthly): Cross-functional scenario testing and agreement on a single executable plan (demand, supply, inventory, cash).
• Executive Review (monthly or quarterly): Review material trade-offs that exceed thresholds or need leadership approval.

Core roles (recommended)

• Facilitator / S&OP Chair: Runs the meeting, enforces agenda, ensures decisions recorded.
• Demand Lead (Sales & Marketing): Presents forecast, promotions, customer opportunities and risks.
• Supply Lead (Operations / Production): Presents capacity, planned maintenance, constraints, and production plan.
• Finance Lead: Shows cash and margin impacts, inventory valuation, and financial constraints.
• Planning/Data Steward: Owns the data pack and validation; prepares scenario comparisons.
• Procurement / Suppliers: Confirms supplier commitments and lead time risk.
• Customer/Key Account Rep: Provides commercial context for prioritized customers.

Compact meeting agenda (time-boxed)

1. Opening and objective (5 minutes) — facilitator frames the decision horizon and thresholds.
2. Data sanity check summary (10 minutes) — planning steward highlights anomalies in the pack.
3. Demand review (10 minutes) — demand lead summarizes forecast drivers and major deltas.
4. Supply review (15 minutes) — supply lead reports capacity, constraints, supplier issues.
5. Scenario comparison and trade-offs (20–30 minutes) — compare base/upside/downside scenarios using the scenario template.
6. Decision rules application (10 minutes) — apply decision matrix to choose an executable plan.
7. Confirm commitments, owners and actions (10 minutes) — record who does what and by when.
8. Escalations & next steps (5 minutes) — escalate unresolved items that cross thresholds to Executive Review.

Data pack checklist (required fields and suggested formats)

Send a validated pre-read pack 48 hours before the meeting. Each data owner should supply the following at the agreed SKU/part-level and planning horizon (weeks/months):

Demand inputs

• SKU / Product ID, Location, Customer (if relevant)
• Time buckets (week/month) with forecasted volumes
• Committed orders (booked sales) and open quotations
• Promotions, launches, and marketing events (with start/end and expected demand uplift)
• Forecast confidence / category (e.g., high/medium/low) and drivers
• Backlog by order and promised date

Supply inputs

• Master Production Schedule (MPS) by SKU/time bucket
• Capacity (available hours / machines / lines) and planned downtime
• Planned maintenance windows and known reliability issues
• Supplier commitments, lead times, and outstanding POs
• Changeovers and constrained resources
• WIP and yield assumptions

Inventory & logistics

• On-hand quantity, in-transit, allocated to orders, and quality holds
• Reorder points and safety stock policy
• Transit lead times and freight constraints

Finance

• Working capital / inventory value impact for each scenario
• Revenue and margin impact of forecast changes
• Cash or budget constraints that limit inventory or capacity choices

Suggested KPI set

• On-time delivery (OTD) / fill rate
• Forecast accuracy (MAE / MAPE for the relevant horizon)
• Days of inventory (DOI) by product family
• Capacity utilization and planned vs actual production
• Backlog days and customer-critical backorders

Scenario-testing template (use one row per scenario)

Compare at least a Base case and one or two alternate scenarios. Keep scenarios simple and assumption-driven.

Sample row (abbreviated): Upside: demand +20% for Product A due to promotion; capacity gap 15%; inventory falls 3 days; cash +$250k; service neutral if expedite; decision = accept partial with expedited runs; owner = Ops Planner.

Decision rules (examples you can adapt)

• Customer prioritization: Protect On-Time Delivery for top X% of revenue customers. When conflict arises, prioritize those customers if the margin is above threshold.
• Inventory vs cash: If inventory value increase > $[threshold] and cash shortage exists, prefer delaying low-margin builds and use targeted expediting for high-margin SKUs.
• Capacity overcommit: If capacity gap > Y% and cannot be closed within Z days, trigger options: subcontract, overtime (if cost < threshold), or reschedule non-critical orders.
• Supplier risk: If supplier lead-time variance > N days or PO shortfall > X%, escalate to procurement and consider dual-sourcing for critical SKUs.
• Escalation threshold: Any decision that increases working capital by more than $[threshold] or reduces projected OTD below target must go to Executive Review.

Decision matrix (quick guide)

For each significant trade-off, score Service (S), Cost / Cash (C), and Risk (R) on 1–5 (1 low, 5 high). Use total or weighted scores to guide choices where rules don't force a single option.

Meeting outputs (what to capture and store)

• Agreed executable plan (demand and MPS) with effective date
• Explicit decisions (what changed and why)
• Owners for each action with due dates
• Updated KPI targets and monitoring focus
• Escalations sent to Executive Review (with rationale)
• Attach the validated data pack and scenario worksheets to the meeting minutes

Pre-meeting checklist (for the planning steward)

• Validate key fields (no missing SKUs, totals reconcile to GL and order book)
• Highlight exceptions and provide a 1-page executive summary
• Prepare scenario worksheets and populate base case
• Send pre-read 48 hours before; confirm attendees
• Ensure data sources and definitions are noted (who owns which numbers)

How to adapt this pack

Treat these templates as starting points. Set local thresholds for escalation and tailor the KPI set to your business model. Keep the meeting focused on decisions and owners — avoid turning S&OP into a blame session by focusing on trade-offs and next steps.

Storage & change control

Save each meeting's validated data pack and decisions in a shared place (versioned). That historical record helps improve forecast drivers, identify recurring gaps, and measure whether decision rules produce desired outcomes.

Quick printable templates

Use the scenario table, the decision matrix, and the meeting outputs checklist as printable sheets for the meeting room or to attach to the digital minutes.