front matter
preface
As COVID hit us in early 2020, I started training more companies on demand planning. Everyone realized at once that predicting future demand was critical for businesses. But challenging.
I have always been obsessed with continuous improvement and excellence. So, after each training course delivery or project, I took the opportunity to refine my approach to demand forecasting. Coaching teams across four continents and various industries made me realize that demand planning excellence can be boiled down to a set of best practices. Over time, I improved the methodology itself and how to explain it in a structured, straightforward way.
Pretty soon, I realized that I was starting all my projects with the same questions: Are you tracking forecast value added? How do you capture demand? Do you measure yourself against a benchmark? What is driving your demand? And I followed the same steps: collecting demand, determining the right forecasting granularity and horizon, testing out different models, implementing forecast value added, and so on.
Over time, I organized these questions and steps in a structured way: the five-step framework to demand planning excellence.
This book will guide you through these steps. Presenting you with the best practices to lead your demand planning process to excellence.
Feel free to share how you applied these ideas and techniques. You can reach me at nicolas.vandeput@supchains.com or on LinkedIn.