SCM Demand Management Effectiveness

In order to effectively design and implement APO Demand Planning any organization, it is important have a clear working framework. Critical aspect to consider is that Demand Management is an approximation; it is never a pure science. There is quite a difference between forecasting and Demand Planning, forecasting is a mathematical action while Demand Planning is a process where forecasting if part of the process.

The objective of this post is provide food for thought regarding the Demand Management process.

The key objective is to achieve an efficient Demand Management system that is user friendly ( different user profiles), has the required technical enablers (forecast procedure)  and is able to achieve primary objective of maximizing throughput of the organization taking into consideration business complexities:

• Supply chain pattern; make to order, make to stock, export markets, VMI, toll manufacturing, late pack customization  ect..
• Product life cycle
• Proliferation of products
• Different roles in the business impacting Demand Planning

SAP APO Demand Planning is one of the most un-structured solution in SAP; un-structured implies that the whole Demand Planning solution has to be built with the provided technical framework. It is purposely un-structured in that it has to be built to satisfy business requirements with respect to data views, data aggregation and data manipulation.

In order to effectively manage Demand Planning it is critical to understand the following:

• The technical framework provided by SAP DP
• Key elements in the technical framework provided by SAP DP
• The Demand Planning Process