The effective management of demand and supply always has been at the very heart of the manufacturing and distribution enterprise. A veritable mountain of books and articles, accompanied by the availability of countless hours of classroom instruction and professional seminars, have mapped out every process, elaborated on each principle, and discussed the topic from every possible angle. Yet, each worker, each APICS course instructor, and many of the articles in this and other periodicals lament the absence of the necessary coordination between enterprise demand and supply components. The litany of seemingly unsolvable problems is all too familiar: The products that sales is selling are never in stock; manufacturing expends time, effort, and overtime to build products that are never sold or to expedite product quantities that were understated in the original forecast; costs are expanding; customers are growing increasingly dissatisfied; and feelings of frustration, distrust, and anger between sales and operations destroy necessary collaboration and team building.
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