Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a management discipline which aims to align production volumes with an accurate sales forecast. Stakeholders work together to create a unified view of the market, and to predict demand by looking at data from ERP systems and other IT applications.
For many companies, S&OP means a weekly in-house meeting of sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution to confirm the plan for next week. However, S&OP can grow to incorporate suppliers and distributors, and look at longer term and strategic topics.