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

In recent years, the collaborative demand-to-supply management which strategically supplies products to the market so as to maximize profit is a critical role for establishing a sustainable company. However, sales sector and production sector, respectively, do not always work together for corporate-wide optimization. In the most case, sales sector is responsible for maximizing sales. On the other hand, production sector is responsible for minimizing production cost. In the SCM age, this situation causes to produce excess inventory as well as long order fulfillment time. For the collaboration of both sectors, a strategic demand-to-supply map has been developed. The map consists of a row for demand speed and a column for the smoothing factor, and the respective elements indicate the indices in economics and reliability on collaboration. This paper presents a theory and an effective planning tool, called the planner, for the collaborative demand-to-supply management based on the strategic demand-to-supply map. The planner consists of demand forecasting, aggregate planning, strategic map, production scheduler, and progressive analysis. The effectiveness of the planner is demonstrated using a numerical example. In addition, this paper shows that the planner is useful not only for supporting the collaborative demand-to-supply management but also the systematic training and education for staffs at sales department and production department. This paper also presents the potential areas of future development on the collaborative demand-to-supply management and the planner.