A Theory and Tools for Collaborative Demand-to-Supply Management in SCM Age

Akihiko Hayashi
The University of Electro-Communication, Japan

Nobuaki Ishii
Bunkyo University, Japan

Masayuki Matsui
The University of Electro-Communication, Japan

In recent years, collaborative demand-to-supply management, which strategically supplies products to the market in order to maximize profit, has played a critical role in establishing a sustainable company. However, the sales function and the production function do not always work together for profit optimization. In most cases, the sales function is responsible for maximizing sales. On the other hand, the production function is responsible for minimizing production cost. In the SCM age, this situation causes production of excess inventory as well as long order fulfillment time. For the collaboration of both functions, a strategic demand-to-supply map has been developed. The strategic map consists of a row and a column indicating the demand speed and the smoothing factor for demand forecasting. This paper presents a theory and a planning tool, called the planner, for collaborative demand-to-supply management based on the strategic map. The planner consists of demand forecasting, aggregate planning, the strategic map, the scheduler, and progressive analysis. The effectiveness of the planner is demonstrated with a numerical example. In addition, this paper shows that the planner is a useful tool for staff in the sales department and the production department for training or understanding collaborative demand-to-supply management. This paper also presents the potential areas of future research and development of collaborative demand-to-supply management and the planner.

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This paper has been downloaded 2066 times since published. The persistent DOI of this paper is DOI:10.31387/oscm040021.