Posts Tagged ‘training’

Demand Planning for CPG Companies

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Consumer Packaged Goods Companies seeking forecasting accuracy improvement are faced with a number of issues such as:

• Data availability (especially Point Of Sale or channel data)
• Lack of internal demand communication to enhance accuracy
• Inappropriate processes and tools for promotional forecasting
• Frequent, unexpected events affecting planners’ assumptions and models

In our Demand Forecasting Web workshop to be held on January 20 and 22, 2010, we will illustrate the methodology to address challenges specific to pull-based Demand Planning for CPG companies
1. How you can leverage customer inventory and POS in creating accurate customer demand plans?
2. How are the principles of Account Based Forecasting (ABF) used to create the total supply chain forecast for manufacturing?
3. Why is event modeling important for CPG companies, and how should the impact of promotional events be captured in your forecast models?

This workshop will explain the process to create a demand-driven pull forecast that incorporates the effects of changes in market, consumption patterns, and inventory cycles to model a supply chain forecast.
You can view more info and register at
http://demandplanning.net/cpg-demand-planning-web-workshop.htm

The discounted price of $299 is available until December 31, 2009 and covers both modules. The price includes all materials and calculation templates.

Jan 20 – Module 1 11am to 2pm EST / 8am to 11 am PST

Jan 22 – Module 2 11am to 2pm EST / 8am to 11 am PST

If you register for both modules using the discounted price, you can join a special Q&A session at the end of Module 2 on practical problems that you face at your company.

Please review other training offerings for 2010 at http://demandplanning.net.

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Excellent participation in the Forecasting Tutorial

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

The forecasting workshop on Oct 22 and 23 held at Whippany, NJ was well attended by companies from different industries from Consumer goods, to medical devices to Technology companies. We had participants from

  • SMSC
  • J&J
  • Tools Group
  • Bush Brothers
  • Merck
  • Crabtree and Evelyn
  • Avon Products
  • Niles Audio

Thanks to the great audience, the workshop was very interactive with people talking about their real world planning experiences and comparing notes on how they dealt with specific situations.  A number of questions were addressed during this interactive forum.  I truly enjoyed the participation and nothing better than conducting a workshop with an engaging audience.  Thank you.

The major focus on the first day was forecasting in the current economy.  There was a lot of discussion on the V-shaped recovery and how to forecast for it.  Although exponential smoothing is an adaptive technique that normally catches up with a lag, it is difficult when the demand suddenly drops and then sharply recovers a few months later.  We all discussed the importance of scenario planning and other techniques that are important like leading indicators.

The guest speakers Mark Temkin and Jay Nearnberg also provided valuable insights to the group.  There was discussion on inventory optimization, S&OP and demand metrics.  There were number of questions on modeling and metrics, particularly the usage of MAPE and the methodology to compute the MAPE.  The weighted Mean Absolute Percent Error seemed to be the most common performance metric used by most organizations, although some had used a variation of it.

Please feel free to post any follow-up questions on this workshop either here or in our Linked-In Group for DemandPlanning Net Training.

Mark Chockalingam

Woburn, MA

November 3, 2009.

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