Why Demmand Planning

Over the next post I will try to focus particularly on demand planning. No wonder, demand planning has become a key part of any supply chain department, and its importance has grown as the demand has become one of the key indicators for any end product.

But, how I got into demand planning and forecasting?

Since I finished my degree and started working at a Distribution Centre´s finance department, I was instantly fascinated by supply chain, and became more and more interested in pursuing a career in this field as the time passed. 

The first drawback when I started looking for a role in demmand planning came in the form of my qualifications and background. Having a non engeenier degree was saw at first as a handicap to pursue a career in supply chain by many people, but I was determined to get my foot into a role that could provide me with the experience and know how needed to start a succesfully career in logistics.

It wasn´t until I get the opportunity to join the logistics department of one of the biggest companies in its area of business when I realiced how lucky I was to have the opportunity to work in an area that I love. And it didn´t take long before I corroborate how amusing, dinamic and exciting the role of demand planner was.

I had a vague thought of what demand planning was, and reduced it to putting a couple of years of sales history into a forecasting software, sit and whatch the magic happen, obiously it didn´t take me any long to realize that forecasting and planning is a mixture of hundreds of different things and only if all of them run smoothly, the whole system works.

 

Nowadays I try to keep things simple, experience is key to stay ahead of the many aspects that may affect the future demand of a particular product, whether this product will feat in a catalogue or the strikes in a factory in China will delay the goods you were expecting to receive in your warehouse, demand forecasting will always be very influenced by certain elements that you won´t be able to control, therefore, understanding the market you will be working in and the different specific situations a product will go through until it reach the shelf of an outlet will help, you but it won´t guarantee your predictions will be accurate. Only when you try to see the big picture and encompass all the different aspects you will be getting closer to a prediction that hopefully in the end will not be too far from the real figure!

Forecasting and demand planning is not a science, and the different elements involved in any demand analysis will prevent any forecaster to present an exact figure, however, the development of new forecasting systems has helped a lot to improve the predictions we make.

In the next post I will try to delve in some other aspects that make forecasting and demand planning one of the most exciting areas to work in. I hope I see you around