برنامه ریزی تقاضای مشتری در فن آوری های روشن و شفاف : یک مطالعه موردی در بهبود مستمر از طریق ممیزی پیش بینی فروش
کد مقاله | سال انتشار | تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی |
---|---|---|
6812 | 2000 | 8 صفحه PDF |
Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)
Journal : Industrial Marketing Management, Volume 29, Issue 1, January 2000, Pages 19–26
چکیده انگلیسی
One of the critical drivers of supply chain success is effective customer demand planning. A company must be able to accurately forecast its business opportunities, and then effectively plan throughout its supply chain to exploit those opportunities. Unfortunately, many companies fail to understand the importance of effectively forecasting customer demand. This article presents a case study of one company–Lucent Technologies–that is committed to continuously improving its ability to effectively forecast customer demand. Lucent recently demonstrated that commitment by conducting a sales forecasting audit, performed by external experts, that has had a significant impact on its sales forecasting process and performance. The case study presents the process for conducting a sales forecasting audit, the benefits Lucent has realized from the process, the challenges they continue to face, and the factors that can be applied to other organizations.
مقدمه انگلیسی
One of the critical drivers of supply chain success is effective customer demand planning. A company must be able to accurately forecast its business opportunities, and then effectively plan throughout its supply chain so it can exploit those opportunities [1]. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to recognize the top- and bottom-line effects of poor customer demand planning. From a top-line perspective, companies cannot take advantage of demand for their products and services if, first, they fail to accurately forecast that demand and, second, they fail to develop and implement appropriate plans to build the required supply chain capacity to fulfill that demand. From a bottom-line perspective, effective customer demand planning allows a company to minimize its supply chain costs by minimizing inventory, purchasing, logistics, and production costs. One large industrial company that has recognized the leverage available from effective customer demand planning is Lucent Technologies. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process improvements that Lucent Technologies has undertaken over the last several years, as well as the challenges that they continue to face. This company's experiences help to point out principles of effective customer demand planning that will allow other organizations to improve their management of this critical business process. It will also describe an audit process that has helped Lucent Technologies identify opportunities for improvement, and provided a platform upon which fundamental organizational change can occur.
نتیجه گیری انگلیسی
The experience of going through a sales forecasting audit has been extremely beneficial for Lucent. Considerable effort went into development of the CDP system and procedures prior to the audit, but the CDP team was receptive in learning from the audit that forecasting practices at Lucent had room for improvement. There was tremendous value in obtaining the insights from experts who had not “grown up” in the Lucent environment and who were not influenced by previous experience with the CDP process. These insights provided the company the opportunity to rethink fundamental process design and deployment. The audit also provided a platform for affecting organizational change. Regardless of whether Lucent management agreed with various findings or recommendations put forward by the audit team, these findings and recommendations have provided, and continue to provide, a framework for continuous improvement. There are several learnings from the Lucent experience that can be used at other companies. One of the most important insights that came out of the audit process was that companies must be prepared to confront “clashes” with corporate culture and entrenched ways of doing business. Because of these inevitable conflicts, agents of change must, above all, be patient and tenacious. It will not always be possible, for various cultural or political reasons, to immediately accomplish everything necessary to become world-class in forecasting. Rather, it is important to win small victories and demonstrate success, thereby building the momentum that may be needed to make more substantive changes. This is the road of continuous improvement on which Lucent has begun to travel in their efforts to become world-class in this critical business function. Discussion of other learnings can be organized around the four focus areas that emerged from the audit: training; reward and recognition; metrics; and process. First, in terms of training, the experience at Lucent has reinforced the importance of extending forecasting training beyond the forecasting department. Because they rely heavily on the input from their sales organization, Lucent felt that it was necessary to deliver forecasting training to its sales teams. Every company should identify those individuals whose input is critical to sales forecast accuracy, and then develop and deliver training programs that help those individuals understand both how to forecast and why the accuracy of forecasts is so important to the organization. Second, on the subject of rewards and recognition, Lucent discovered that this area was the most difficult to address. While there was no disagreement at Lucent regarding the axiom “what gets measured gets rewarded and what gets rewarded gets done” [4], changing the way that people are compensated may be the most politically charged issue the company has faced. While it may be politically charged, there is no better way to influence people's behavior relative to the forecasting process than through a well-designed reward and recognition program for excellence in forecasting. Third, in terms of metrics, an important learning that emerged from the audit process at Lucent was that individual behavior cannot be influenced unless a process is in place to measure individual contribution to forecast accuracy. These metrics should capture how accurate the forecast would have been without an individual's contribution, and how accurate the forecast was with that individual's contribution. Such measures are not only important to enable the reward/recognition efforts discussed above. These measures are also important in deciding whether an individual should provide input to a particular forecast at all. Finally, in terms of process, Lucent has learned that obtaining perspectives from multiple sources will lead to better forecasts. For example, they learned that asking salespeople to forecast at the customer level, over a relatively short time horizon, made forecasts more accurate. They also learned that asking marketing personnel to forecast at the product-line level over long time horizons made the forecast better. In other words, people with insights about future demand patterns should be asked to provide input to forecasts, but only at the level and time horizon at which they normally operate. An additional source that Lucent found to have improved forecasts was history. Following the audit, Lucent began using sophisticated time-series and regression tools to identify patterns in historical demand data, and this too helped to improve their forecasts. All companies can enhance their forecast accuracy if they use a combination of quantitative (statistical) techniques to find patterns in historical demand, with qualitative (judgment) techniques to adjust those statistical forecasts. In summary, the forecast audit process at Lucent was successful in two critical ways. First, after implementing a number of the recommendations that emerged from the audit, Lucent improved their forecast accuracy dramatically. This improvement has led to reductions in operations and marketing costs and improved levels of customer service. Second, the audit has provided Lucent with a framework for continuous improvement. While this continuous improvement process is always challenging and occasionally painful, the rewards have been clearly worth the cost.