Integrated Demand Signals Update

In 1992, Wal-Mart deployed Retail Link® to provide its vendors with information on the sales trends and inventory levels of their products. Since that time, the industry has been bullish on the opportunities that exist for leveraging POS and other downstream demand signals to improve upstream supply chain operations and planning. A recent MIT symposium on Integrated Demand Signals (IDS) delved into what companies are planning to do about IDS. The bottom line is that managers are in a quandary. Extensive piloting has shown that huge benefits are possible; however, to garner them will involve two daunting types of implementations: Massive enterprise-wide business processes and a Demand Signal Repository (DSR) database. LARRY LAPIDE | Dr. Lapide is a Research Affiliate at MIT and a Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Boston Campus. He has extensive experience in industry, consulting, business research, and academia as well as a broad range of forecasting experiences. He was an industry forecaster for many years, has led forecasting-related consulting projects for clients across a variety of industries, and has researched as well as taught forecasting. He was also a market ...