In our last post on the topic, we reviewed the story of how Linksys improved forecast accuracy at the SKU level by 350% with better demand planning, as told by Robert Bowman in Free The Enterprise! This emphasized the need to put a good demand plan in place and illustrated the importance of good [...]
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In our last post, we reviewed Infor’s top ten demand planning strategies. In this post we’re going to illustrate why you need to put your demand planning strategy into action immediately using a recent case study from Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies as our example. In Free The Enterprise! Bust the Silos [...]
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A recent Harvard Business Review article by Rene M. Stulz dives into six ways companies mismanage risk (membership required) that are just as applicable to supply chain operations as they are to financial operations. As the article points out, these missteps are just as likely to occur in good economic times as they are [...]
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The bullwhip effect is as true today as it ever was in modern, elongated global supply chains where small errors at the front are magnified throughout the process. Andrew Kinder, Director of Product Marketing, Infor Forecasting is tough. Really tough. Especially in today’s market where consumers are fickle, credit [...]
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Demand Planning is probably at the forefront of your thoughts these days. You don’t want too much inventory, because you can’t afford to tie up working capital, but you don’t want too little inventory either, because, with sales down, you can’t afford to lose even a single sale. You need to operate lean, [...]
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With greater supply chain instability, driven mostly by the soaring price of oil, but exacerbated by the rush to outsource manufacturing, comes a growing need for leaner, meaner, inventory management, as pointed out in a recent Supply Chain Brain / Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies article that was taking another look at inventory planning [...]
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Supply & Demand Executive recently ran an article by Aatish Goel & Murali Krishnan Sundararajan on The Flat Supply Chain that noted that globalization has created a massive increase in supply chain complexity and that supply chain visibility is emerging as a critical differentiator for companies to stay ahead of the competition. The article [...]
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The EE Times ran a great article by Romit Dey and Manoj K. Singh last month on Demand Shaping and how it aligns customer trends with supply. But I have to ask, is it really “demand shaping” or is it more “demand sensing”. Is not “demand shaping” what marketing and advertising does? [...]
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In Forecasting, Part I, I pointed out that accurate forecasting is a complex and challenging problem but that it is generally still possible to create good forecasts through the proper combination of judgmental and statistical methodologies. Specifically, manually adjusted statistical forecasts by an expert who has “inside” information, is aware of “one-time” events, and / [...]
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