Concurrent planning is a way of planning in which the demand plan, the supply plan and the production plan are worked on together, in one system, so that a change in one plan shows up in the others at once. In older planning, each plan was made by a different team, often in a different spreadsheet, one after another. The sales team made a forecast. A week later, the purchase team planned the parts. A week after that, the factory planned its shifts. By the time the last plan was finished, the first one had often changed.
In concurrent planning, all three plans read the same data. When one number changes, the software recalculates every plan that depends on it. It then shows each team what the change means for them. Concurrent planning is a part of supply-chain planning software.
Consider a maker of mixer grinders in Coimbatore. On a Monday, the sales team raises the November forecast from 50,000 to 60,000 units, because wedding-season orders from dealers are higher than expected. The software immediately checks what this needs. Every mixer grinder needs one motor. The motor supplier has said it can send only 55,000 motors in November. The factory's two assembly lines can make 56,000 units a month on the normal shifts.
So within minutes the planners see two problems, not one. They will be 5,000 motors short, and 4,000 units short of factory capacity. The software offers choices. The factory can add a Saturday shift on one line, which adds 4,000 units in the month. The purchase team can ask a second motor supplier for 5,000 motors, through strategic sourcing. Or the company can accept that it will sell only 55,000. Each choice shows its cost and its effect on deliveries to dealers. The planners pick the Saturday shift and the second supplier. The new shift plan goes to the factory's manufacturing execution system (MES), which tells each line what to make each day.
Without concurrent planning, the sales team would have promised 60,000 units to dealers. The shortage of motors would have appeared only weeks later, when it was too late to fix.
How is concurrent planning different from the chains described in P2P, O2C and R2R processes? Those chains record what has already happened: an order, a delivery, an invoice, a payment. Concurrent planning works on what will happen in the coming weeks and months, before any order exists.