Below are a number of excellent resources that help to explain and outline many of the principles and practices used in creating a crystal clear view of demand throughout your extended supply chain: (All articles require Adobe® Reader®)

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• Real Time is Too Late: Written by Jeff Harrop. Originally published in Supply Chain and Logistics Journal - Fall/Winter 2006 issue.
   
  The trend toward sharing information “in real time” has been developing in retail supply chain management for well over a decade now. Today, many retailers share vast amounts of data with their suppliers on a daily basis – store level point-of-sale data, inventory balances in stores and warehouses, open orders throughout the supply chain, and so on... Yet, despite this gravitation to sharing more information more quickly, retail out-of-stocks have stubbornly remained at 8% since they started measuring it.
  

• Business Process Blueprinting: Written by Mike Doherty and Jeff Harrop.
   
  Most people wouldn’t dare take on a building project without first having a set of plans drawn up. The same logic should apply when changing business processes, but it’s often tempting to dive right into installing software or changing procedures without really knowing what the impact will be on the organization as a whole. If you can’t make something work on paper, then you’ll have a tough time trying to implement it. This paper will teach you how to blueprint your business processes to give your implementation the best chance of success.
   

• Driving the Frustration Out of Demand Planning: Written by Jeff Harrop.
   
  In retail, creating operational forecasts for replenishment is no small task. Many retailers sell thousands of items that run the gamut of complexity: in addition to the “bread and butter” products, some are highly promoted, some slow moving, some weather dependent and yet others have short lifecycles in the assortment or marketplace. Trying to produce accurate predictions of the future while keeping the day-to-day supply exceptions under control can be daunting. While there’s no secret formula for predicting the future, the best practices outlined in this paper will ensure that your demand planning process is adaptive, responsive and viewed as an asset – not a burden – to your organization.
   

• No Forecasting: Written by Darryl Landvater and Andre Martin. Darryl is the bestselling author of MRP II Standard System and World Class Production and Inventory Management. Andre is widely regarded as the father of time-phased planning and is the author of Distribution Resource Planning and Infopartnering.
   
  Have you ever asked yourself why we spend so much time and energy to develop a forecast, and then it’s so often wrong? Low forecast accuracy was one of the key findings in a recent Grocery Manufacturers of America study by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. “Errors at the national, monthly item-level - measured as mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) - was 23 percent in 1996 and 31 percent in 1999. In 2002, the error rate had increased - to 34 percent on a national, monthly level and 44 percent on a shipping location level.” How can this be? A huge effort over a sustained time period, and it’s getting worse. It makes you wonder whether we’re working on the real problem.
   

• Integrating the Retail Supply Chain: Written by Mike Doherty and Jeff Harrop.
   
  Since the mid 1990s, the rate of change in retailing has probably been more rapid than in any other sector. Nothing confirms this more than the emergence of the on-line retail sector, or as it’s sometimes called, eTailing. While the growth potential of eTailing is substantial, a supply chain that is responsive to consumers is paramount for survival – regardless of the channel.
    

• Implementing Real Sustainable Change: Written by Mike Doherty and Jeff Harrop.
   
  Designing and implementing a new business process is tough. But, done properly, it’s also quite fun and extremely rewarding. This paper outlines a proven approach to designing and implementing world-class supply chain planning processes for retailers and sustaining the cycle of change. It’s based on practical, grassroots experience that can only be gained from working with front line employees: the people who will actually execute the new processes day in and day out.
   

• Separating Demand and Supply Planning: Written by Jeff Harrop.
   
  For retailers embarking on an implementation of time-phased planning at the DC level, the decision on where and how to forecast is critical. The conventional wisdom born out of MRP tells us to create a separate forecast for each item at each stocking location. In retail, the numbers of item/locations number in the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands at DC level alone. The impracticality of the conventional wisdom requires us to redefine how we think about demand.
   

• The Antidote to Supply Chain Constraints: Written by Andre Martin, the father of time-phased planning and bestselling author of Distribution Resource Planning and Infopartnering. Originally published in Supply Chain Management Review - November/December 2001 issue.
   
  Companies involved in the retail supply chain face a recurring problem: how to handle constraints -- those shortages of capital, people, equipment and space that keep product from flowing smoothly through the supply chain. Optimization solutions can help, but they're expensive. A more cost-effective way to manage constraints is to anticipate them. One proven technique is time-phased capacity planning.

 
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