Supply Chain planners are often presented with false choices when exploring how they can improve their capability through technology. Too often the choice is presented as either staying with ‘spread-sheet’-planning or adopting sophisticated optimization tools that through black-box ‘magic’ are promised to deliver superior plans with little effort. While ‘spread-sheet’-planning offers limited growth potential the black-box alternative tends to be very costly – and often ultimately disappointing. Rules Based AdapLink offers an attractive alternative with costs and implementation speed similar to spreadsheets and planning quality and productivity approaching the much costlier optimization solutions. This is possible because the planner often already has developed rules that lead to good plans, but typically has too little time to ensure that they are applied in a timely and consistent fashion. AdapLink can eliminate the ‘timeliness’- and ‘consistency’-problem by automatically applying the rules quickly across the supply chain. This in turn allows the planner to pay more attention to the non-routine tasks.