Here are some of the common mistakes businesses make with their forecasting, demand management and supply chain:

Businesses make to forecast but think they are making to order

Placing orders earlier is helpful

Negotiating purchase price reductions on the basis of the forecast

Putting lots more detail into the forecast

Confusing stretch sales targets with sales forecasts

Thinking that having inventory of products will improve service levels

Carrying out the "end of year" inventory reduction programme

Allowing product variety to increase without having the processes and structures to cope with it

Keeping production and supply going when the stocks are full

System configuration does not match the business goals and exec aspirations 

Tendency to treat all items in a similar way from forecasting/planning/strategy perspective 

Parameters have been set that are inappropriate c.f. the actual flexibility of the business processes and internal constraints

The performance measures encourage local department optimisation at the expense of overall business performance

Management teams are not fully aware of how the system is driving the business and on what basis decisions are being made by it (system rules, priorities etc)

Inappropriate configuration causes work-around solutions to be adopted by users and this results in loss of control and dilutes benefit of integrated system

System settings encourage demand amplification even when the practical limitations of the business can support flexibility needed to cope with un-amplified demand (unnecessary batching)

IT too removed from the “on-the-ground” needs of the business and fail to provide working solutions to fundamental process issues

Expecting the IT intgegrator to be the expert in all your business processes. 

We often hear complaints about IT integrators but it is unrealistic to expect them to be experts in the business processes. Their main knowledge and expertise is about installing and implementing IT systems. They cannot be expected to have the depth of practical production, sales and supply chain knowledge required to get the best performance.

Data maintenance/accuracy is given insufficient priority and the consequences of poor data within integrated systems are not understood

Not involving key users early enough in the specification of systems and processes

Businesses try to replicate existing bad practices in a new system rather than use opportunity for enhancing the process – this usually leads to unnecessary & expensive mods.

Tendency to allow the product ranges to expand in an uncontrolled way and with little regard for impact on supply chain flexibility and constraints

Accepting customer demand as a given without analyzing and understanding the underlying real need

Adding functional complexity to a system solution

Specifying and implementing expensive bespoke reports that can usually be extracted from the system by key users with minimal training

... and so on!