Optimizing the end-to-end value chain through demand shaping and advanced customer analytics

As supply chains become increasingly outsourced, the end-to-end supply network is often spread across multiple enterprises. In addition, increasing focus on lean inventory can often create significant supply/demand imbalances over a multi-enterprise supply chain. This paper discusses a set of integrated analytics for supply/demand synchronization with a new emphasis on customer facing actions called demand shaping. Demand shaping is the ability to sense changing demand patterns, evaluate and optimize an enterprise supply plan to best support market demand and opportunity, and execute a number of demand shaping actions to "steer" demand to align with an optimized plan. First, we describe a multi-enterprise cloud-based data model called the Demand Signal Repository (DSR) that includes a tightly linked end-to-end product dependency structure as well as a trusted source of demand and supply levels across the extended supply chain. Secondly, we present a suite of mathematical optimization models that enable on demand upselling, alternative-selling and down-selling to better integrate the supply chain horizontally, connecting the interaction of customers, business partners and sales teams to procurement and manufacturing capabilities of a firm. And finally, we describe findings and managerial insights from real-life experiences with demand shaping in a server computer manufacturing environment.