Demand Planning

Hunger Games: Managing Food Logistics Challenges When Demand Spikes

Since it hit restaurants in January 2019, the Impossible Burger, which is made from plants but offers the taste and texture of beef, has been on a roll. When the company launched in Gelson’s Markets in southern California, the Impossible Burger zoomed to the top spot among packaged goods, outselling the next most popular product […]

GOOD QUESTION | Popeyes chicken sandwich shortage: Supply chain fail or marketing savvy?

All marketing strategy in my humble opinion. Like a limited release of Jordan sneakers and then a re-release at a later date. Milton O’Quinn III National Operations Manager, RPM It’s a great lesson—companies should do more data analytics to better understand how consumers respond to social media marketing and build up supply chain agility and […]

When Worlds Combine

Inbound Logistics continues to provide actionable content to help drive supply chain change.

Back-to-School Supply Chain

7 Ways to Integrate Demand and Supply

Companies can achieve cohesive demand and supply integration (DSI) by following seven fundamental rules, recommends a recent University of Tennessee Global Supply Chain Institute study. The paper, based on the work of Mark Moon, PhD, a UT professor and global supply expert, focuses on 18 companies in a range of sectors with successful DSI as […]

Managing Warehousing Requirements During Peak Periods (Without Committing to Long-term Contracts) – Capacity, LLC

Managing peak period shipment volume is a structural challenge in the U.S. economy. Those preoccupied with executing order fulfillment services spend much of the year thinking about and planning for it. The surge is a three- to four-month peak in first inbound, and then outbound shipments, with overlap. Shipments to retailers come first, followed by […]

Demanding Service

It is exactly the wrong time to abandon a demand-driven approach to the supply chain.

3 Steps to a Demand-Driven Supply Chain

The on-demand economy means customers expect instant gratification via immediate access and convenient delivery options. Companies must adapt and start optimizing their supply chains to stay competitive. Many companies are still supply driven, constrained by resource capacity, archaic scheduling technologies, and inefficient decision-making. Typically, these businesses match demand by increasing the supply and infrastructure to […]

Making Scents of Demand Planning

Bedoukian Research juggles small batch production with intermittent demand by getting smart.

Inventory Replenishment: Why Push When You Can Pull?

Today‘s supply chains are undergoing significant pressures to become more demand-driven. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers must choose the approach they hope will make the most profit. Should you produce goods according to demand forecasts, or by reacting to what consumers already bought? Companies are investing in a new generation of cloud technologies that enable the […]

Top 100 Logistics IT Providers & Market Research Survey

Inbound Logistics surveys the logistics technology sector and evaluates the top solutions providers leading the way to supply chain excellence.

Christopher McGovern: Watch Him Soar

Christopher McGovern is vice president, supply chain management at Aero Precision, a Greenwich AeroGroup company, headquartered in Livermore, Calif. He has held this position since 2014. Responsibilities: Inventory management, sourcing, procurement, and OEM relationships. Experience: Analyst, political/economic department, U.S. Embassy, Oslo, Norway; product researcher, OEM product research leader, program manager—U.S. government, OEM product manager—marketing, manager— […]

Avoiding Christmas Past: Use Technology to Ensure Timely Holiday Deliveries

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and that means it’s only a matter of time before Santa’s sleigh is filled up with presents from online orders and cross-country relatives. FedEx is anticipating an increase in holiday shipments of 8.8 percent, and UPS is anticipating an 11 percent increase over 2013. Will UPS and FedEx be […]

Forecasting Seasonal Surges Keeps Products on the Shelf

During busy retail periods, news of retail imports and spot transportation rates tends to grab all the attention. Less prominent, but more interesting, is the constant seasonal and promotional flux in domestic consumer packaged goods (CPG), and how manufacturers manage the resulting transportation surge. For CPG companies, seasonal volume typically represents one-third of annual shipments, […]

Heroic Logistics Saves the Day for DC Comics

The DC Comics team leaps into action to create special 3D covers for 52 titles, fighting evil production setbacks along the way.

Trends—January 2014

Getting Demand Forecasting in Hand In the demand-driven logistics domain, forecasting is king. Companies that are best able to predict sputters and spikes, then react and execute against those signals, will gain a competitive advantage. But given today’s market uncertainty—the economy, consumer purchasing power and appetite for new products, sliding holiday seasonality, and emerging omni-channel […]

Raising a Glass to Better Beverage Management

Faced with processing more than 63,000 orders each year, the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission tapped a merchandising optimization and demand-based replenishment solution to keep the booze cruising into stores.