Tweet Sometime during the 20th century sales forecasting went from being a necessary part of someone’s job to being someone’s entire job. Sales forecasting, has made the move from being only 1 step in the inventory/production analyst’s planning to a forecaster’s full time position. This is definitely good news for those of us who wanted to…
Tweet Businesses go through change frequently and as we all know, change is difficult because we are human. Change and transformation are necessary for companies to adapt and improve, but in order for change to be effective, many factors need to be addressed simultaneously. Take demand planning and forecasting for example. If you work for…
Tweet On the supply-side, Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) most commonly fails when an unconstrained plan meets real-world constraints. In this post, we would like to explore the nature of these constraints and suggest ways to moderate the operations plan in order to come up with a more predictable supply capability. Process and Product Constraints…
Tweet “Demand Planning”, “Forecasting”, “Brand Operations”, and “Planning” These are not only terms that you will find on my resume, but also the answer I’ve given in social settings when asked what I do for a living. I’ve yet to give an answer without receiving the inevitable follow-up query: What exactly is a Demand Planner?…
Tweet I believe that there are two ways your organization can improve the performance of statistical forecasting: 1) Wait for your business to become more forecastable 2) Develop a process to drive continuous improvement in your statistical forecasting approach At PepsiCo Chicago, we have made great progress to improve the performance of our statistical forecasts by…
Tweet Our ability to forecast was met with increasing skepticism in 2010 – and this is a good thing. A decade ago, the thrill of technological innovation provided hope that more data, bigger computers, and fancier models would one day solve all our forecasting problems. Yet we now have more data, bigger computers, and fancier…
Tweet Go to any supply chain conference, and you will hear it. Yes, the term collaboration is bandied about. It is over-used and often over-hyped in discussions largely without meaning. So, what does it mean? And, what happened to the supply chain collaboration initiatives of the 1990s? Let’s start with the definition. The greatest success…
Tweet One of the interesting things about forecasting finished goods is how many functions participate in the development of the forecast and are subsequently impacted by the results. In a typical S&OP and consensus forecasting process, Sales, Operations and Planning collaborate to reach a best forecast to drive the operations and profit forecast for the…
Tweet I’m sure that all of us have played the Telephone Game at one time or another. One person starts a message that travels through several people and then we all have a good laugh over how much that message changed by the time it got to the last person. As funny as that can…
Tweet Why don’t you have these in stock? Why do you have so many of these in the warehouse? Why is your fill so low? Do these questions seem familiar coming from members of your management team or your customers? Of course they do! They are constantly asked throughout the year as we all try…
Recent Comments