ECR - Efficient Consumer Response Australiasia

Business Background

The March 1998 issue of Supply Chain News published by Coopers & Lybrand identified two aspects of demand in the consumer goods supply chain, consumer demand and customer demand. The article continues to break down these aspects into key influencing factors or drivers. The opportunities for savings contained within the grocery industry supply chain are broken down further in the discussion paper "Demand Management" produced by the Demand Forecasting Working Group of GISCC in November 1998. On Demand Management alone the savings were identified as $130.2 m. When combined with other concepts and enabling technologies, the potential savings move between $764.7 m and $899.3 m.

The intent of this project is to arrive at a set of industry guidelines and practices that allow companies to accurately forecast demand. These guidelines should take account of the different nature of trading relationships, information availability and environments and allow companies to use these guidelines as the basis for operational level changes within their own company and trading relationships.

Objective

Deliver an industry guide to Demand Forecasting which covers the major trading relationships/environments and the steps of how to implement improvements in each of these environments. It should be independent in its approach and grounded on the principles of cost reduction through ECR so that the resultant guide is a useful and usable set of materials to facilitate demand forecasting initiatives in the food and grocery Industry.

Project Team

Report

"A Guide to Demand Forecasting within the Grocery Industry"