Comments
Utilizing nominal weight instead of actual weight for master planning is highly detrimental for any business that produces catch-weight products. In industries such as meat processing, weight variability can be significant, making reliance on fixed (nominal) weights inherently inaccurate. These variances introduce meaningful downstream impacts across the operation.Under the current system structure, this issue is driving substantial lost sales, as planning outputs do not accurately reflect true available supply. This directly impacts customer fill rates and OTIF (On-Time In-Full) performance, ultimately eroding overall customer confidence and service levels.In addition, the misalignment between nominal and actual weights leads to consistent overproduction. Master planning is effectively overscheduling, resulting in excess finished goods inventory. This, in turn, contributes to increased shrink and associated financial losses.It is also important to recognize that the meat business is inherently seasonal. Fluctuations in demand throughout the year—driven by holidays, weather patterns, and grilling seasons—impact both production requirements and the size of primals. This seasonality further amplifies variability in weights, making accurate, actual-weight-based planning even more critical. Without accounting for both variability and seasonality, planning inaccuracies are compounded, increasing operational inefficiencies and financial risk.
This is a great idea and would make a real difference when selling Microsoft Sustainability Manager in smaller countries and markets.In particular, allocation profiles would be a strong candidate for a modular add-on. Allocation is an essential capability for ESG reporting, but today it is available only as a Premium feature. For many customers, this becomes a major blocker.In many cases, allocation is the only Premium feature the customer truly needs, but they cannot justify paying around $8,000 per month just to access that functionality. This has directly affected sales opportunities where the customer would otherwise be a good fit for the product.Modular pricing would solve this very well. However, if modular pricing is not feasible, I would strongly suggest making allocation available in the Essentials tier. To balance the packaging, another less essential capability could potentially be moved to Premium instead.TL;DR: Allocation is a fundamental part of ESG reporting for many organizations. There should be a way to access it in Essentials, either as a built-in feature or as a modular add-on.
