Global S&OP rollout: Knauf's five steps, 95% forecast accuracy by 2032, and why process comes before technology, with Jochen Bansemir

About Jochen Bansemir

Planning director for global supply chain management at Knauf, the family-owned building materials group known for gypsum boards and insulation, with around 40,000 people and operations from quarry to customer worldwide. Jochen joined Knauf as a trainee more than 20 years ago, ran production scheduling and then operations for Central Europe, and has led planning globally since May 2024. Listen to the episode.

Mining to customer, and the material doesn't travel

Knauf's supply chain starts in the quarry. "We start with the mining, and we really have the supply chain to the customer. It's the full cycle." Gypsum board is heavy and cheap relative to its weight, so "the material doesn't travel that much, otherwise it's not beneficial anymore. We have to make sure we have a short way to market." That shapes everything downstream: a dense network of plants and distribution centres, mostly make-to-stock, and bottlenecks that are as often trucks and loading bays as production lines.

Across that network, maturity varies enormously. "We have quite advanced parts of our business which have run an S&OP cycle for years and already have digital tools in place. And we have regions and divisions where we really start from scratch, implementing an Excel process to get the mindset and the people on board before we can run a digital solution." Bridging that gap, "from somebody who has absolutely no experience in planning to the people who want the high-end solution with AI optimisation", is, he says, the biggest issue in his daily life.

Knauf's five steps, and why S&OP comes first

Jochen's answer is a five-step roadmap. First, an S&OP process. Second, better demand planning, with technology to break the forecast down to region, SKU or sales level as needed. Third, supply planning that maps demand onto the factories' capacities. Fourth, execution. Fifth, allocating orders to the planned network with the right product mix. "We really go from planning to execution. This is the way we see it within Knauf."

Ben pointed out that most companies build demand planning, then supply planning, then combine them in S&OP. Jochen inverts it on purpose. "We say S&OP is the fundament. That's the baseline. We need the mindset and the people in place. We need to understand why an S&OP process is so important to get transparency across our divisions and regions. If we have that, and a demand planner for example, then we can go into the technology." The first S&OP already contains demand and supply planning, "but on a pretty basic level, and we do that a lot in Excel. Process and people come first before we go for technology."

A standard core, with room to adjust

Best practice at Knauf comes mostly from North America, where Knauf USG has run a stable S&OP for years. "We could copy-paste a lot out of that. The core baseline is the same, and then we do small adjustments to make it work everywhere."

Tools are the exception to the single standard, and deliberately so. Some regions need the link from strategic to tactical planning; others need tactical to execution. "Different vendors have a different focus on the topic. So we probably also have different solutions within the Knauf network. But we at least want to go down to these two solutions. Otherwise, if you have too much in place, you kill your IT."

The organisation follows the business, not geography. Insulation, ceilings and gypsum run their processes independently, because "the knowledge of the market, which indicators we have, is quite different": political renovation incentives move insulation far more than ceilings. Within gypsum in Europe, four regions share one process on one timeline, because goods flow between them; South America runs as one region with less detail, because it can.

From reacting to planning: seven weeks in the US

Jochen's own conversion came in the field. As a production scheduler, "I just took a look at what orders were already there, calculated a little bit what would probably come over the upcoming weeks, and placed my production orders. That's probably still the daily workload in a lot of countries." Then he spent seven weeks inside Knauf USG's planning process. "That changed my mind a lot, because I understood that if you are able to look at the upcoming three, four, five months, it makes daily operations that much easier." As head of Central Europe, he invested "a lot of time to get sales on board to at least have a simple Excel solution".

The horizon is three months, and sometimes it's the steel price

Building projects make the long range unreliable: "It's pretty hard to look at the upcoming 6, 8, 12, 18 months, because you won't know which group of material will be needed on bigger construction sites." A new process starts with the next month; the working horizon is three. In project-driven markets, a single site can lift demand "20, 30, 40%", so the conversation with sales differs by market.

Procurement sits in the demand process for some product groups. For metal profiles, the biggest cost driver is steel. "If we understand the steel price will rise, every customer tries to buy before it rises, so we have higher demand. If it sinks, everybody is waiting for a better price." Procurement's six-month view of steel is therefore a demand input. "There won't be a one-size-fits-all standard. That's what makes the planning process at Knauf so interesting."

Shared capacity, and the end of phone-call allocation

Divisions rarely share plants, but regions do: Western and Central Europe can draw on the same gypsum line. Today, when demand runs above plan, "we are searching for a production capacity that can fulfil the market, and that's just phone calls between people who know each other pretty well. Central Europe calls Eastern Europe and checks whether somebody is able to ship."

The S&OP rollout is meant to end that. From 1 January, every local business in Europe runs the same process. "In the future, we will serve the demand that was planned first. If that is done, then we can think about who gets the rest of the capacities." He expects two years to make the new process lived rather than followed, "and with every month of transparency we get out of the S&OP cycle, it will be easier to check which cross-regional flow of goods makes sense".

95% forecast accuracy by 2032, measured the practical way

Knauf turns 100 in 2032, and its Knauf 100 strategy has 100 initiatives across the whole company. Planning's target is 95% forecast accuracy, "which we will achieve". Wim asked at what horizon and level. "The upcoming three months, at main article group. We truly believe we are quite flexible on changing our products. If we have the right capacity plan and the right raw material plan, we would still be flexible to switch on SKU level. That should be more than enough to drive our OTIF KPIs."

Every division, region and entity gets its own roadmap towards that number, "because they are coming from different starting points. We cannot say, in 2026 you are there, in 2028 you are there." A sister target shows why it matters: 80% touchless orders, "the first person who has to touch an order is the forklift driver", which needs order management, logistics, warehousing and planning all delivering the right material at the right plant at the right time.

What is not in the process yet

Finance is not. "We are not that far ahead on our journey to say we have a good outlook on the upcoming 18 months. We understand we play a significant role in budgeting, but that's not before 2026. We first have to bring in accuracy and a long-term view to get a foot in the door." Transport is not part of S&OP either, but loading and truck capacity are, "because often our bottleneck is not the production capacity, it's the freight capacity or the loading capacity in the plant", and a link to the TMS is one of the main technology criteria.

Data science is arriving by a different door. Knauf's new operational excellence unit, staffed from inside the planning team, is responsible for system utilisation and data quality rather than for building forecasts: "With the latest technology, it's more about feeding the systems with the right data than really running the demand planning process." First test regions were planned for 2025.

A queue of business units wanting in

Knauf 100 has changed the politics. "Everybody understands that the way we are currently running our business, more reacting on topics, doesn't fit the future targets. We play a really critical role, and that makes our life within the company much easier." The five steps have the general partners' buy-in and a challenge to go faster. "We have more of the issue that we cannot fulfil all the requests at the same time. There's quite a queue of business units who want to join that journey."

The hard part is the one that never shows up on a roadmap. "Historically we have local governance, local processes and a local way to market. The tough point is to say, we somehow need to fit a standard, because if you adjust everywhere and configure everywhere, you won't get the benefits out of the system. Maybe you cannot fulfil all the requirements from the different entities."

Growing planners from within

Another Knauf 100 target is 70% of leadership positions filled internally, with successor rules reviewed by HR and top management. Jochen, trainee to global director, is the example, and credits a mentor: "I probably wouldn't be in this position without him."

His own rule is to protect two tracks. "There are two streams: being an expert, which is underestimated, and leadership. We often miss the experts, who don't have the personality to drive and manage people, but play an absolutely significant role." The classic mistake: "Taking the guy who is doing best on operations as the next team lead. You take out your best person on operations and bring him into a spot where he won't fit." Recruiting to Iphofen, "not a fancy city like Munich or Berlin, probably the middle of nowhere", is hard, and he leads a distributed team differently as a result. The "hidden giant" problem cuts both ways: candidates discover in interviews how big Knauf is.

Your next steps

• If maturity varies across your regions, start every region with the same S&OP process in Excel, and add technology only where the people and process are ready.
• Pick one standard core and allow at most two planning tools, chosen by whether a region needs strategic-to-tactical or tactical-to-execution links.
• Set your forecast accuracy target at the level and horizon that actually drives decisions; for Knauf that is article group, three months.
• Put the real bottleneck in the S&OP process, even if it is trucks and loading bays rather than lines.
• Bring procurement into demand planning for product groups where an input price moves customer behaviour.

Jochen's advice for planners starting out is about mindset rather than reading. "You must have an open mindset. There are so many people who say, we have done that for the last 20 years and we were quite successful. Bring the engagement, bring the trial and error, try to use the system differently, and you will already stand out. And make sure you are on your managers' radar." For leaders, his resource list is short: "You don't need any books. Listen to the people, take your time for your one-on-ones, and give them the opportunity to speak openly about their career ideas."