Handbook of Supply Chain Engineering

The shortcoming of supply chain management is that it has focused on efficiencies and execution, operational logistics and manufacturing processes, not so much on improving the competitiveness of a company. The demand chain focuses primarily on revenue enhancement, versus the traditional supply chain emphasis on cost minimization. Second, the supply chain tends to 'push' products based on limited knowledge of the market, versus a 'pull' from the consumers based on current demand. The demand chain is also much more planning and strategy oriented, rather than execution or transactional in nature, since the demand chain uses key consumer and market information that is essential to the strategic planning process The ultimate goal of the demand chain is to satisfy the most profitable markets, while managing service levels for the markets with less profitable demand patterns. Companies will be profitable only if their supply chains are effective, and they will be effective only if they are demand driven. Forecasting and demand estimation in companies usually result to multiple views and forecasts. Integrating the planning processes should lead into one commonly accepted forecast. Best-practice companies have implemented an integrated process, where second-guessing is eliminated. The forecast is made across all the functions resulting to an enterprise-wide forecast. Still today, in most companies each department makes its own forecasts based on multiple information sources. Hence, this well-knitted; well-researched and well-debated work on this subject is highly academic and research quality will be appreciated and accepted by students; scholars and teachers.

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