In an ideal world, demand and supply would be steady and predictable, resulting in optimal capacity utilization and no back orders or missed customer orders. However, in the actual supply chain world variations in actual sales vs. projected sales result in lower forecast accuracy, and either overstocking or stock out situations.

Demand sensing helps us identify the actual customer order trends and helps us improve the near-term forecast. Strategic actions like demand shaping for knowingly increasing or decreasing the demand for the product can be undertaken by sensing demand signals.

Over the past few months, we’ve been running simulation tests on different demand forecasting methods: Winter’s additive & multiplicative, seasonal and robust seasonal. Then, we used MAPE to determine the forecast accuracy for each method. Here’s what we found.

While major supply chain consequences aren’t usually life threatening, you can bet they have a huge impact on you, your organization, and your customers. Your goal is to prevent problems early but it doesn’t always happen.

In our whitepaper on the 8 essentials of an S&OP Software, we outlined creating a consistent data basis for supply chain planning as an essential S&OP software requirement. In this week’s ‘Supply Chain Talk,’ Arkieva CEO Harpal Singh discusses the key aspects of creating a consistent data basis that supports supply chain planning.

What demand planning lessons can we learn from the recent United Airlines Overbooking Issue?

We all love spreadsheets. But when do you know when you’ve pushed your Excel spreadsheet to the limits? In this week’s, Supply Chain Talk, Arkieva CEO Harpal Singh discusses the telltale signs that show when you are pushing the limits of Excel.

How do you get the sense of what works for demand planning? Market volatilities including changes in the weather can affect any business at any given time. As such, businesses cannot rely on their history alone without considering the full picture of possible market changes. When these changes occur, businesses should be ready to adapt without causing a disruption in existing business processes. So how to do you get to the point where you get a sense of what works when it comes to demand planning?

How can operations and finance better collaborate to achieve the common goal of profitability? In this week's Supply Chain Talk, Arkieva CEO Harpal Singh discusses ways that manufacturers can reduce the disconnect between operations and finance.

In webinar on B2B Demand Sensing, we discuss practical examples of how upstream manufacturers are using B2B Demand sensing to reduce inventory costs and identify additional sales opportunities.

2017 Supply chain productivity and prioritization tips for supply chain planners.  Every morning, a supply chain planner must make this...

Last week I wrote about the potential benefits in forecasting results based on removing outliers from one-time events. A key...