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Vol 25 - No 07 - September 1999 Letter: Reply response to John Hackforth In reply to John's letter: On the second part of the question John is absolutely right - the key has been transposed and is the wrong way round - mea culpa!! On the main part of the question I hope and think that we are saying the same thing in different ways. The Demand Plan is formulated at the start of the process, then supply input is received and the Demand Plan changes it's nature from being done in isolation of supply to be amended as a result of supply input. This amended Demand Plan is then the plan that Sales & Marketing are working to achieve - I think the difference is that John refers to this as part of a bigger Business Operations Plan, whereas I still refer to this component as an individual Demand Plan - albeit quite a different content to the one at the beginning of the process - in particular including key Sales & Marketing actions required to manage the demand to best match the output of the demand planning/supply balancing conversations. The key point I wanted to emphasise is the constant, circular nature of the process with the Demand Plan consistently being updated (it is a living - not a static thing)to reflect both changes in the market and the supply capability. Managing to optimise the two is the trick. On the question of documented assumptions I could not agree more. Without these - and documented actual occurences too (major contract wins, promotions, transport strikes etc.) the forecaster/planner cannot do their best work - and this is after all what we pay them for. Thanks to John for the interest and the feedback - I hope this satisfactorily closes the loop. Jeff Banning Planning Programme Mgr EMEA Compaq Related Topics:
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