Module 6 Flashcards
LO: What are unique forecasting and inventory management challenges for innovative products?
TBD
LO: How do the dynamics between production/distribution lead-time and demand forecast accuracy influence opportunities for inventory replenishment?
TBD
LO: What is the “newsvendor model” and how can we use it to make single period inventory decisions?
TBD
What is Fast strategy?
- MAKE-TO-STOCK (Example: Zara)
- competitive cost and continuous portfolio renewal (short time “from idea to market”) and affordable cost
- functional and short-lifecycle products
- Demand is “pushed” by a collection” forecast, where fast product development is a critical capability
- applied by “fashion creators” in industries such as apparel and beauty products
What supply chain strategy is this?
What is the Custom-Configured strategy?
- CONFIGURE/ASSEMBLE-TO-ORDER (Example: Room & Board furniture)
- focus on product configurability (customization with limited options for several features)
- not having to forecast for all products
- forecast is for workload before product decoupling, with extra capacity and design for easy assembly
What supply chain strategy is this?
What is the Agile Strategy?
- HYBRID: MAKE-TO-ORDER/MAKE-TO-STOCK (Example: Industrial Suppliers)
- job-shop style, responsiveness to unpredictable demand
- “exclusive” and short-lifecycle products
- workload has medium-size peaks and valleys
- less asset utilization
- extra capacity and common components for agility
What supply chain strategy is this?
What is the Flexible Strategy?
- CONFIGURE/DESIGN-PROCESSES-TO-ORDER (Examples:
- making, configuring, and designing to order
- price is irrelevant due to uniqueness
- capacity on standby, capacity pooling, reconfigurable
- low volume, super specialized, relationships are shorter-term
What supply chain strategy is this?
What things do we need to think about for forecasting for innovative products?
- options for demand forecasting
1) may need forecast coverage of the full demand
2) in other case, production lead time is quick, and can do rapid replenishment based on initial sales
What do we need for demand forecast of innovative products?
- Probabilistic forecast requires (not just a point prediction)
- Forecast accuracy improves with time (as sales history builds)
- Aligns forecasts and ordering decisions
- Initial/Pre-launch forecast
- Updated forecast (based on early sales)
What are the tools for developing pre-launch forecast?
- Market research (consumer based, A/B testing)
- Causal-based Forecast Engine
- Expert Opinion (e.g., Committee-based) Forecast Engine
- Like-SKU-based Forecast Engine
What is Causal-based Forecast Engine?
Causal Modeling uses independent explanatory variables to predict future demand.
May use statistical regression and/or machine learning techniques
1) external factors drive demand in a systemic, predictable way
2) data on these external factors are available and easily updated
What is Expert Opinion Forecast Engine?
Solicit information from an individual or panel of “experts” to inform the demand forecast.
Techniques differ by:
- types of “experts” used
- procedures for collecting information (individual vs consensus)
- steps for reaching final forecast (type of feedback between iterations, discussion vs no-discussion, number of iterations)
What was the key takeaway from the Expert opinion example for clothing items in the lecture?
When the Committee agrees (scores have lower std dev), they tend to be accurate (forecast error).
- high agreement = low error
- low agreement = high error
What is Like-SKU-based forecast engine?
Uses data on the demand history of like-SKUs to generate demand forecast.
Qualitative, in selecting the right Like-SKU
Helpful for:
- estimating lifecycle curve - timing of peak demand and rate of demand decline
- predicting impact of launch date and marketing plans
- rolling aggregate demand forecast to lower level (National -> region, region -> store, style -> size)
(basically scaling down to the specific situation)
What was the key takeaway of music industry forecast example in lecture?
It was an example of Like-SKU-based forecasting
Rap-music example:
26% of total demand in 1st week, 40% of total demand in 2nd week - RAPID growth in beginning, falls out quickly with long tail
Latin-music example:
smaller increase