Demand Patterns Inside a Period
Demand forecasting is often done in planning buckets such as months or weeks. But what about the pattern of demand inside a period? Whatever pattern it is, a demand planner should strive to understand it.
Demand forecasting is often done in planning buckets such as months or weeks. But what about the pattern of demand inside a period? Whatever pattern it is, a demand planner should strive to understand it.
Industry analysts, big-time consultants, and your peers are all talking about technology, digital transformation, and the future of the supply chain. It can seem like a lot of noise given the day-to-day pressure you feel while working to ensure that inventory is on hand and positioned where it is supposed to be. With all you have on your plate, are you aware of the signs that it is time for a change?
These “key tools” balance a need for simple with a need to handle the complexity of SCM – following the IBM adage – complexity exists whether you ignore it or not, best not to ignore it.
Some time ago, I had been trying to help a business improve its statistical forecasting. We tried different parameters and different forecasting algorithms but the statistical forecast for about half of the products could not be improved no matter what we tried. We decided to do a deep dive to understand the reason.
Learn the importance of advanced optimization for statistics (AOS) even for simple methods such as exponential smoothing and the importance of community intelligence.
Demand Planning directly affects the business financial plan, pricing, capex decisions, customer segmentation and resource allocation. Considering the criticality and implication of this process, Demand Planners and Managers need to continually evaluate their current Demand Planning process and ensure that the Demand Plan generated is holistic, relevant and timely.
How global businesses can build a collaborative demand planning process
Imagine a demand planner working with 10,000 unique combinations. One of the not so envious tasks for this person would be to generate statistical forecast for all these combinations. These days, the statistical forecasting tools available on the market can forecast these combinations using a list of forecasting methods and figure out which method works best for a particular combination.