1.    Demand Planning and Supply Chain Forecasting.  Demand Planning is the art and science of accurately forecasting the demand for your supply chain.  In this workshop, you will learn how to develop a baseline statistical forecast and leverage a collaborative process to add customer intelligence. 

        The result is a more accurate plan that may include promotional activity, customer intelligence, and display activity.  An accurate demand plan helps you reduce inventory costs and increase customer service levels.  When properly implemented and used in the supply chain planning process, the demand plan helps create a lean and customer centric supply chain.

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2.    Supply Chain Metrics.  This workshop will review the entire gamut of organizational metrics for a manufacturing supply chain including customer service metrics (fill rates), inventory metrics (inventory turns, dead and near-dead inventory, inventory coverage), manufacturing planning (production volatility, manufacturing schedule adherence), demand metrics (forecast accuracy and forecast bias), and transportation and distribution metrics (on-time shipping performance and order cycle).  We will discuss the mechanics as well as organizational ownership of these measures.  This workshop will explain how these measures are inter-related and the effect of organizational bias on the observed metrics and a model of how we can align incentives.

         You will learn

• The mechanics of key supply chain metrics used in a manufacturing organization
• The inter-connectivity of metrics across the supply chain

3.   Performance Measurement.  This workshop will provide the knowledge base and a menu of performance metrics that you can take to your decision makers.  The objective of this workshop is to help your organization implement a balanced Performance measurement and incentive alignment process.  The performance Metrics covered include Forecast Error, Persistent Bias, Working Capital Performance, First Time Fill Rates, Transportation and Distribution Metrics.

4.   Collaborative Planning.  Collaborative forecasting and replenishment activities extend an organization’s supply chain to include both the suppliers and the customers.  The collaborative processes truly represent the B2B extensions of the internal supply chain and require agreed-upon goals, a set of rules and involve detailed information sharing between suppliers and customers.  In this session, we will review the various collaboration initiatives that are fairly common in the CPG sector including VMI, CMI, ECR, and CPFR and their key benefits to the manufacturer's supply chain.   We will precisely lay out the mechanics of the different collaborative initiatives and how to set up a collaboration process with your customers.

5.   Retail and POS Forecasting.  In the Strategic Forecast process, the retail take-away is a key input.  We incorporate the effects of changes in Market share, consumption patterns, and inventory cycles to model a shipment forecast.  Hence this is a demand-driven pull forecast.  This workshop will explain how demand forecast is modeled as a function of point-of-sale consumption forecast and changes in retail inventory.  We explain the mechanics of obtaining and using syndicated POS data from sources like Nielsen's and IRI. 

If you are interested in organizing a customized workshop in the above areas, please contact us: