Forecasting, Demand Management, And Capacity Planning

A root problem in supply chain management is the unavoidable uncertainty in predicting future demand. This condition manifests itself in the unreliable sales forecasts that form the heart of many inventory management and planning systems. Contributing to this nebulous nature of predicting the future is the distortion of past facts as the usual communication platforms, which include telephone, mail, fax, some EDI processing, and a bit of e-commerce, are often rife with mistakes, errors and manual overrides.