Demand planning, Digital supply chain planning

The goal of Demand Planning is to strike the balance between supply and demand. This results in you having sufficient stock levels to meet customer demands, but without having a surplus.

You need the most accurate demand forecast, to maximize profitability. At the same time, you need to juggle inventory levels, product lines and lead times to ensure customer satisfaction. As a result, demand planning is a critical part of supply chain operations. 

A way of ensuring this balance is through real-time planning. And this is where real-time data from operations plays an essential role.

Real-time data helps decision-makers to have more visibility and act accordingly. It allows data-driven decision-making to optimize resource allocation and predict potential issues.

Moreover, you can combine real-time data with financial and other data. This allows you to improve forecasts and ordering cycles. In the end, this live data makes real-time and profitable planning possible. The goal is to get the right product to the right place at the right time in the right quantity. To do so, you need the right data at the right time to the right people. Digital real-time planning can accomplish this.

Real-time planning is the process of gathering data without time delays. This translates analyzing and planning into a real-time decision process, where activities can be communicated immediately.

Live data enables real-time planning. This means that you can easily pivot and react in a timely manner when faced with unexpected disruptions. As a result, demand planning managers can make the most informed decisions.

Enterprises leveraging real-time data in the demand planning process will gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. Companies using outdated information and historical data will be unable to keep up. As market conditions change, and customers become more demanding, real-time planning will become even more critical.

In an ideal world, global supply chains would always run using real-time planning. However, to have functional real-time planning, businesses need to take a number of issues into account. 

Ensure a Robust and Scalable IT Infrastructure

You need a robust and scalable network infrastructure to make your data flow between business functions and its facilities. This means data needs to work double time to be automatically analyzed and having highly efficient systems to make this happen is a must. Monitoring those systems and their scalability to enable advanced analytics at any moment.

Having a sturdy and scalable network infrastructure is like having a smooth highway system for your data to travel between different parts of your business. Imagine your data as cars on this highway, needing to reach various destinations quickly and efficiently. With a scalable infrastructure, your data doesn’t just travel smoothly; it’s like having turbocharged engines that can analyze themselves as they drive, making decisions on the fly to optimize performance.

Scalable systems can dynamically allocate and release resources based on demand. For instance, a cloud-based e-commerce platform can automatically provision additional server instances during peak shopping seasons and scale down when traffic decreases, ensuring consistent performance.

The benefits are certainly worthwhile. This infrastructure equips your business with the possibility of real-time planning because your data is at your fingertips.

“Real” Digital Twins

The capability of having a virtual representation of your supply chain has been around for a while now. But imagine if you were able to have a digital twin updated in real-time? Instead of having a static replica, you would have a real twin, with a real-time overview of your whole business operations.

These digital twins create the forecasting capability that real-time planning requires for predicting maintenance and modeling internal system processes. All these processes will once again help you anticipate disruptions and take action.

Information and Collaboration, Cornerstones

When implementing real-time planning in your supply chain, information and collaboration are critical. These are the cornerstones setting out business processes and managing stakeholders. It enables the organization to all be communicating within the same parameters.

You will need to meet with the different team members and agree on how the data is extracted and analyzed. Drilling down into the data is key. You need more than a high level overview. This would only bring inaccurate insights, which in turn, would drive uninformed decisions.

Industry 4.0 Technology Integration

Digital transformation is here to stay. Integration of industry 4.0 technologies helps every facet of your business. From the shop floor to the finance department, integrated technology unlocks real-time advantages and helps you plan for unprecedented disruptions or changes in the market.

Every business wants to have a competitive advantage that will make them succeed in the short term — and keep their position in the long term.

To decide on a platform for demand planning, you must consider real-time planning features. This will allow you to improve business accuracy, save time, and increase revenue. Effective demand planning solutions should assist supply chain managers with their role — and unify your business from the get go. 

Real-time planning allows for your business to synchronize your processes and systems with the people who need to be involved in all levels of the planning process.  Supply chain success starts with the most accurate demand plan possible and that starts with accurate and real-time data.

Want to know more about Demand Planning? Check out other valuable resources:

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

LEAVE A REPLY