The Market-Driven Supply Chain

Introduction

We are in the midst of a profound shift in the ways of commerce: The economic engines of supply and demand have traded places. The business of buying is shifting from a centuries-old supply-driven model and moving rapidly to a market-driven, customer-centric one. Customers are dictating what they purchase, insisting upon specialized products for unique situations and tastes. Product-line complexity is getting broader, and demand variability per product is growing higher by orders of magnitude. Seemingly excessive service levels and response times are becoming the norm.

While sales and operations planning (S&OP) traditionally has been an important operations management process, its design has remained essentially unchanged for more ...