For Peer Review O nly Mastering demand and supply uncertainty

Key challenge for mastering high uncertainty of both demand and supply is to attune products and business processes in the entire supply chain continuously to customer requirements. Product configurators have proven to be powerful tools for managing demand uncertainty. This paper assesses how configurators can be used for combined product and process configuration in order to support mastering high uncertainty of both supply and demand. It defines the dependence between product and process configuration in a typology of interdependencies. The addressed dependences go beyond the definition phase, and also include the effects of unforeseen backend events during configuration and execution. Based on a case study in the Dutch flower industry, a conceptual architecture is proposed for coordination of these interdependencies and development strategies are identified. 1. Introduction Mastering both demand and supply uncertainty is a key challenge for many companies. Markets are increasingly turbulent and also the vulnerability of production and logistics processes is growing. The management of uncertainty has been addressed as an essential task of supply chain management (among others by Davis, 1993). The well-known bullwhip effect shows that amplification of demand uncertainty can be reduced by supply chain coordination (Lee et al., 1997). There are two main categories of supply chain uncertainties: i) inherent or high frequent uncertainties arising from mismatches of supply and demand, and ii) uncertainties arising from infrequent disruptions to normal activities such as natural disasters, strikes and economic disruptions (Van der Vorst and Beulens, 2002, Kleindorfer and