S&OP across three horizons: lessons from mining and metals

When I led the Sales and Operations Planning direction at an international, vertically integrated mining and metals company, we designed and implemented the enterprise S&OP process from the ground up — and modeled the ERP workflow that supported it, integrating SAP ERP and SAP APO.

The single most important design decision was to plan on three horizons at once: 3, 15, and 36 months. Each horizon answers a different question, and confusing them is one of the most common reasons S&OP programs stall.

Three horizons, three conversations

• 3 months — execution. Can we make and ship what we have promised? This is where capacity conflicts and logistics constraints surface.
• 15 months — the budget conversation. This horizon connects directly to Corporate Finance: working capital, profit, and cash-flow impact.
• 36 months — strategy. Capacity investments, new products, and market shifts belong here, not in the monthly firefight.

Bring finance into the room early

S&OP becomes integrated business planning only when finance is a participant, not a recipient. Giving Corporate Finance early previews of financial risk — and estimates of the impact on working capital, profits, and cash flow — changed how leadership engaged with the plan.

Plan new products inside the process

New product planning often lives outside S&OP, which means its demand on capacity and inventory shows up late. Bringing it into the process, together with clear inventory strategies, made trade-offs visible before they became problems.

The system supports the process; it does not replace the conversation.

Technology matters — the SAP integration was essential — but the lasting value came from a disciplined monthly rhythm, scenario analysis that leaders could trust, and executive presentations that made demand and supply trade-offs easy to see.