It sounds deceptively simple: the right products
supplied when buyers want them equals optimal
profits and excellent customer service. Yet this
fundamental business equation continues to
frustrate most companies.
Every enterprise that makes a product or
provides a service seeks processes to ensure
supply is available to meet demand, be it
widgets or workers. But every supply chain
management team also is aware such alignments
based on buyers’ preferences remain elusive,
ever more so in an increasingly complex, global
economy. The perfect match of demand and supply
over time remains very much a moving target. In
all businesses, supply inevitably matches demand
in the long run, but often at the expense of
lost sales opportunities or dumping goods at
distressed margins.
However, that doesn’t mean the supply chain
cannot better marshal its partnerships, in-house
resources and business intelligence to gain
market share while continuing in its traditional
role to strengthen a business’s bottom line. Nor
must it continually react to demand, rather than
try to positively influence it through optimized
long-term, mid-range and real-time practices.
Just what those may be are being given new
examination in the discipline known as demand
management.
This summer some of the nation’s top executives
gathered in Chicago for a groundbreaking
discussion on how companies can better influence
and meet market expectations using supply chain
strategies. The “Demand Management: Matching
Supply and Demand over Time” executive
roundtable held Aug. 17-18, 2006, included
top-level authorities from the hardware,
software, manufacturing, consulting and academic
industries. All came to the table with extensive
experience and influence in the demand
management market; thus, the mix of members
provided an accurate snapshot of where demand
management is being used well, and where it
needs improvement.
