The simple answer is: it’s a balancing act. The not-so-simple answer is, like the process itself, more complicated. Demand planning is a balancing act that involves keeping a product’s inventory levels in line with the level of demand for the product. And inventory includes not just the product but the materials and components needed to make that product. Accomplishing this means keeping track of many things at once, including historical data, lead times, market trends, and even external factors such as weather and oil prices which can impact the cost of transportation. Pulling all this together requires strong planning processes that use precise material forecasting even for seasonal and peak-volume demand, robust vendor and supply chain connections, production reliability, real-time tracking of lead times, and more.
For 35 years, PRIDE Industries has been helping customers by providing supply chain management and forecasting for a wide range of products. And while the technology has changed over the years, our commitment to successfully getting your product to market has not. Partnering with PRIDE Industries means access to solid vendor relationships, flexible production scheduling, and data-driven forecasting–providing demand planning that will help you avoid product shortages or inventory overstock, even for products with cyclical demand.
Proud recipient of Global SMT & Packaging Magazine’s 2021 GLOBAL Technology Award in the Contract Services category. This award recognizes PRIDE Industries’ innovation in electronics manufacturing processes, engineering services, and strategic supplier management.
Demand planning is a method used to predict future customer demand for a product or component while minimize excess inventory and associated costs.
To ensure customer satisfaction and keep inventory costs low demand planning can be implemented to keep supplies in alignment with excepted demand levels.
Using demand planning can enhance supply chain efficiency by enabling better coordination across production, procurement, and logistics.
Demand planning can be used for forecasting. This involves using historical data, market trends, and other relevant information to predict future demand for a product.
Demand planning requires first pulling together data from sources relevant to the product—market trends, historical sales data, etc.--and then step two is analyzing the data to create demand predictions.
Companies use demand planning uses forecasting to adjust their strategies in response to changing market conditions. Forecasting is an important part of demand planning.
A demand planning team can help guide production schedules and procurement activities providing determination of when and how much to produce or purchase from suppliers to align with expected demand levels.
