About The Planning Nerd
I've spent years inside supply chain planning, inside businesses where the forecast was wrong, the S&OP meeting achieved nothing, and the ERP couldn't answer the question everyone actually needed answered. My background is in agricultural FMCG companies, both corporate conglomerates and family run businesses, but the problems are the same wherever you go: imperfect forecasts, arguments between sales and supply, production constraints nobody saw coming, and executives who need a decision, not another dashboard.
The Planning Nerd exists because most content about supply chain planning is written by people explaining a textbook, not people who've actually had to run the process through literal bushfires, pandemics, biosecurity incidents, and both growth and constraint environments. I wanted to write the version that skips the diagrams and gets into what planning actually looks like inside a messy, real business.
What you'll find here
Practical guides on demand planning, supply planning, inventory, S&OP and production scheduling, written to actually be used, not just read. Free calculators and templates you can apply straight to your own numbers. And where it's useful, a fictional company called Nerd Foods, which I use to show these concepts working on realistic data rather than abstract examples.
Why free content and paid tools
The articles and the Nerd Foods dataset are free, and always will be. They're here to actually help, and because I'd rather you learn how this works properly than buy something you don't understand.
The toolkits are different, those are the polished, ready-to-use versions of the models I build for myself: SKU segmentation, safety stock calculations, 13-week supply plans, full S&OP packs. If the free content and templates solve your problem, that's genuinely enough. If you want the professional version that handles it for your whole range, that's what the toolkits are for.
Get in touch
If something here is wrong, unclear, or you think a particular planning problem deserves its own article, I'd genuinely like to hear about it.