Trevor Miles, director, thought leadership & chief blogger, at the IE’s High Tech Demand and Innovation Planning Summit. Click here for the slide deck from his " Continuous and Collaborative S&OP" presentation.
It’s known that despite the time and effort put into forecasting, in a dynamic market with lots of volatility, the forecast will always be inaccurate. It is not uncommon to hear of companies within High-Tech struggling to get demand forecast accuracy above 50 percent. The primary reason for this volatility is the Long Tail effect caused by short product life cycle and mass customization on the product side, and globalization and outsourcing on the operations side. With that in mind, the question is: where should one spend time and effort? In making the forecast as accurate as possible and forever analyzing why the results didn’t match? Or in accepting that there is a lot of uncertainty and establishing a capacity to respond quickly and effectively to unplanned demand? Without a doubt, everyone must forecast (and there are significant benefits to doing it well), but there needs to be equal emphasis on how to address unanticipated demand. This session will discuss how and why companies should adopt continuous and collaborative S&OP processes to best satisfy demand profitability while providing high customer service.
Watch this webcast.