The Smart Forecaster

Pursuing best practices in demand planning, forecasting and inventory optimization

Inventory control policies and strategies for a more profitable business

In this Video Dr. Thomas Willemain, co–Founder and SVP Research, defines and compares the three most used inventory control policies. These policies are divided into two groups, periodic review and continuous review. There is also a fourth policy called MRP logic or forecast based inventory planning which is the subject of a separate video blog that you can see here. These videos explain each policy, how they are used in practice and the pros and cons of each approach.

Share, develop, and manage consensus demand plans

Ensure inventory policy matches business strategy. Various team members can create their own scenarios, perhaps dividing the work by product line or sales territory. One decision maker can then merge these scenarios into a consensus plan.

Clean, accessible and actionable data under one roof

Pulling all the data together on the cloud lets you automatically refresh the data every day and always see the full picture. Then you can run analytics to calculate multiple cost and performance metrics and how those metrics would change if you changed key drivers, such as supplier lead times.

Gaming Out Your Logistical Response to the Corona Virus

This short note is about one way your business can develop a plan to adjust to one of the likely fallouts from the virus: sudden increases in the time it takes to get inventory replenishment from suppliers. Supply chains around the world are being disrupted. If this happens to you, how can you react in a systematic way?