Journal of Business Forecasting Articles Issues

As difficult as it was, those of us that managed demand during the pandemic have learned invaluable lessons that can be carried forward. In this article I discuss the key learning moments I personally experienced during COVID-19. In hindsight, supply chains were not as robust as we thought and, in some cases, the compounding impacts of shifting demand and supply constraints made them break all together. Further, we learned that collaboration was always key with COVID forcing companies to adopt the practices they should have had all along. With cautionary tales for the future, I also discuss how hasty decision making when the pressure was on led to major blunders, and how planning systems made existing problems even worse.

Quick response software that responds to rapid changes in demand is all the rage. Vendors even go so far as to say that many of the COVID-related disruptions wouldn’t have happened if we had this technology in place. Such easy solutions rarely reflect reality, however. In this article I argue that quick response forecasting provides little to benefits for most organizations, and ends up being a costly mistake. I reveal the underlying supply chain issues that quick response software aims to solve, and outline whether it is right for your company based your unique supply chain dynamics.

This column includes an update of a recent column in Supply Chain Management Review (SCMR) magazine. It was part of my series that has chronicled the price of oil over the past 17 years. The update discusses how the worldwide initiatives to move to a fossil-fuel free world are falling behind policymaker commitments. Basically, it is taking longer to innovate and deploy renewable energy sources (e.g., solar panels and wind turbines) to replace the still growing worldwide usage of fossil fuels. A meeting I recently had with an entrepreneur made me realize how important it will be to have an excellent service-parts supply chain for these renewable sources. It must keep them up-and-running when the sun is shining and the wind blows – to the extent possible.

Forecasting is traditionally done at a particular level of aggregation—top-down, middleout, or bottom up—depending on the data available and the purpose of the forecast. This article is a case study of how Hershey’s and First Analytics reimagined the process, adopting a hybrid approach. We experimented with moving beyond the standard business hierarchy of product and location, etc. to an analytics focused, data-driven hierarchy that examines similarities across all the SKUs within the business, incorporating both Time Series and unsupervised learning models. The improvements in forecast accuracy with this approach are significant, offering companies a valuable addition to their forecasting toolbox.

It will come as no surprise that strategic initiatives are more likely to fail than succeed. What is less clear, is why or what to do about it. In this article, we discuss the reasons behind failed enterprise-wide implementations such as S&OP and IBP and failed uptake of Annual Operating Plans. Borrowing from behavioral science to examine the drivers of human behavior in business contexts, we outline a framework with which such initiatives are likely to be accepted by key stakeholders across the hierarchy of a business and be seen through to implementation.

In a previous article of the Journal of Business Forecasting (Winter 2022), when we were a few months into the COVID environment, I provided a framework to set up a plan (versus just a forecast) that integrates various constraints to be executed under an S&OP or IBP process. I discussed how such a plan execution is supported by flow and execution levers that allow us to react to demand changes and supply constraints as they emerge. In this article I expand on those concepts to reveal how we can seamlessly connect a company’s logistics, business intelligence, data, and information chains. This elevates S&OP/IBP to an integrated Value Chain process, allowing for a view of the entire product lifecycle from sourcing to manufacturing to consumption.

As Forecasters, we are familiar with demand forecasting and the resulting demand plans that drive business operations across a company. What is perhaps less known is business forecasting for strategic development, borrowing many of the same techniques used in demand forecasting but focusing on a longer time frame to develop long-term business goals and vision. In this article I discuss how Forecasters can drive strategic development with forecasting, taking into account market trends, macro data, other external factors. I discuss the inputs to use (including economic and industry data), models to use for forecast generation, and the process to engage senior management and track progress towards goals.

How did you get started in demand planning and supply chain? I was being trained as a purchasing agent for a food storage company here in Utah, and that purchasing role ended up being demand and supply planning, logistics, vendor management and negotiation, inventory management…basically the entire supply chain wrapped up into one role. It felt natural as supply chain in general is very logical, and I loved the high degree of importance of what I was doing as the choices myself and the team were making directly impacted our internal and external customers.

The second week of March brought unforeseen bank failures in the US which spilled over into Europe. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic, and Credit Suisse, has raised concerns about the banking system and created volatility in financial markets, resulting in rescue efforts by the Federal Reserve and other central banks.

Fast, good or cheap—your company will, broadly speaking, seek to compete along two of these dimensions. When designing a planning strategy it must serve enterprise goals, maximizing its strengths and managing the inevitable tradeoffs. In this article I reveal how to develop an operations planning approach that both maximizes a company’s competitive advantages and translates enterprise strategy into on-the- ground execution. I include a real-life example of a planning strategy that served a particular business model and how success was achieved through cultural change and effective performance management.

Resilience, agility, and responsiveness are the key capabilities of any supply chain, and whose importance was brought into clear focus during the pandemic. These three levers represent each of the planning levels: execution, tactical and strategic respectively. In this article, I discuss the differences between the three, how they support enterprise strategy, and ways to build these capabilities into your supply chain. I also reveal how companies without these capabilities fared during COVID, and how their absence caused companies to make critical planning mistakes.

Despite considerable writing and discussion on the subject, most S&OP processes are not strategic and actually struggle to rise above tactical levels of performance. In contrast, high-performing S&OP processes view strategy as part of a broader planning ecosystem interconnected in a robust, multifunctional manner. This article offers some insights into connecting the elements of S&OP to strategy while at the same time offering an ecosystem model to consider.

Demand Planning doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it exists to support the company’s unique competitive advantages, and must be designed in such a way that decisions made in planning forums support the strategic priorities. The following is a case study of a transformation project I led for a global sporting goods company with a unique growth-by-acquisition strategy. I detail the challenges I inherited, the implementation steps covering people, process, and technology, and the results achieved, along with lessons learned for aligning your planning to overall business objectives.

This article details how to link supply chain planning to business and organizational strategies. Using the examples of Walmart, Target, Apple, and Tesla, I reveal how different companies compete in their respective markets, and the corresponding supply chain approaches that support such strategies. I also discuss the role of gap analysis and a subsequent capability plan in connecting planning to strategy, the importance of developing the right supply chain KPIs to track adherence to strategy, and how demand management and S&OP play a key role in supporting business objectives.