Demand Planning

If you have experience forecasting demand for products or services, you know that obtaining consistently good forecast accuracy is a mix of science and experience.

I get a kick reading “prediction” articles both prior to the year start and then again after the year is complete...when it comes to predicting the very dynamic supply chain management industry, those after year reviews can be quite amusing.

There is little room for error in private label manufacturing; to be successful, it takes a clear understanding of how to provide outstanding service levels for extremely demanding customers in a unique environment of low margins, proliferating SKUs, and multi-threaded supply chains.

If you wish to achieve high customer service levels, you have to master the shape of the demand distribution and, in particular, its right-hand tail, you must avoid shortcut simplifications and approximations in the modeling that will prevent you from getting close to your goal.

For most businesses, the “long tail” is growing, and you don’t have to be an internet retailer like Amazon to see it, companies are dealing with more slow moving items with intermittent demand and unpredictable demand patterns.

This real-life, sales and operations planning (S&OP) account offers a comprehensive look at how a disciplined, step-by-step S&OP revamp can succeed.

Wholesale Distributors are faced with growing costs, shrinking margins, new competitors and demanding customers.

The number of products a planner can manage is heavily dependent on how easy or difficult it is to develop a reasonable forecast for those products.

Effective demand planning doesn’t just happen, it requires work. To move forward, companies have to admit the mistakes of the past, implement continuous improvement programs to drive discipline, and carefully re-implement demand planning technologies to sense and shape demand. Here’s a guide to making sound demand planning a reality.

This white paper discusses sales forecasting from a supply chain perspective. It provides an overview of sales forecasting strategies and best practices to help distributors and manufacturers to better manage their internal and external supply chains, production and distribution plans, and available resources.

The concept of demand management includes demand sensing, demand shaping, demand translation, and demand orchestration throughout the value network.