Business Forecasting 2013 Predictive Intelligence Summit

On June 24 and 25, there was a conference in Chicago. It was the Business Forecasting 2013 Predictive Intelligence Summit. There were four hundred attendees to hear 25 thought leaders in the industry. CR Supply Chain Consulting was well represented at the Summit by Mark Gavoor, Managing Director of CR Supply Chain Consulting, and Ara Surenian, President of our sister company Cadent Resources, Inc. Both spoke on Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). Both are experts in implementing and optimizing S&OP in smaller companies.

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ERP and Excel: Part II

In Part I, we discussed the proper use of Excel with ERPs. We advised against using Excel to manage planning and other operational transactions. In Part II, we will backtrack on that advice, a little, and discuss when it is actually appropriate to use Excel spreadsheets for operations planning and other transactions.

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November 27, 2011 DemandCaster Updates

We have made a number of updates over the weekend that are summarized below:

• Launched Enhanced Event Modeling: We have completely revamped our event modeling process. We will be posting a detailed overview in this blog shortly.


• Modified View of Monthly Buckets in Forecast Table: We have modified the behavior of the forecast table to change to monthly buckets when the forecast graph is changed from a weekly to monthly bucket view. Previously the forecast table would only show the view in weekly buckets regardless of the forecast buckets or graph view selected.


• Changed Multi-Item Linking Behavior: Previously when linking a new item to an old item (supercession), the history table for the new item would show the customer history of the old item. Now the history shows the old item as a single column in history. This allows the user to much easily view where the old history stops and the new history starts. This is particularly helpful when there are multiple items used to form the history of the new item.


• Changed a Few Table Names: Vendors are now Suppliers, Product Classes are now Product Categories, Product Codes are now Tags.


• Locked Unknown Supplier: When an item has no designated supplier assigned (i.e. an internally manufactured item), DemandCaster assigns a default supplier name “unknown.” If a user disable the “unknown” vendor via the data maintenance, all items linked to “unknown” would also be disabled. We have now locked the ability to disable the supplier “unknown” in order to prevent any active item from unintentionally being disabled.


• Modified Selection Interface Item Link Behavior: Previously when clicking on the forecast DemandCaster icon to the left of the item number in the selection interface, the user would navigate to the items forecast list. We have changed the navigation behavior so that the user is directed to the latest forecast for the item. If the user would like to view the items previous forecast, they may click on the previous forecast link in the items forecast detail tool bar.


• Added Current Cost to Two Analytics: We have added the items current cost to stocking and reorder point analytics and reports.

Feel free to contact us with any questions by emailing our support site or calling us at 866-865-2714 between 9:00 am to 6:00 pm CST Monday through Friday.

DemandCaster Server Upgrade and Support Features

We are pleased to announce two significant enhancements to DemandCaster.

Over the weekend we upgraded our servers to improve the performance of DemandCaster. We have added faster processor speeds and increased the memory. We have done this in an effort to maintain and improve the overall DemandCaster user experience. Over the coming weeks we will be introducing further enhancements to improve the responsive of our many user interfaces.

We have also started populating our knowledge base with DemandCaster “How To” articles and general information. This is important because much of this information was previously located in the workbooks and other documents we used for training. Admittedly, we were unsure how best to share these articles. Our customers were accustomed to giving us a call or sending an email to ask a question. Though we welcomed this type of personal service, we realized that many of our customers would also appreciate the ability to answer their questions in a self service manner. As a result, we have begun to publish these articles directly to our support site.

For our DemandCaster users, we have integrated access to these articles from within DemandCaster. You can read how to directly access the help desk articles and initiate support tickets from within DemandCaster in this knowledge base posting.

We have also decided to make our knowledge base articles available to the public to allow everyone to read how DemandCaster operates. We are not afraid to share our approach because even though our customers love our technology, they love our service more. It is what our clients value most about DemandCaster and Cadent Resources.

We hope you will find these two enhancement of value. As always, please do not hesitate to let us know your questions, comments, or concerns

DemandCaster Updates: Forecast Graphs, Suggested Orders, Safety Stocks, and Misc.

We are pleased to release a number of changes and improvements to DemandCaster today! We have provided a summary of the changes below:

1. When viewing a forecast detail that is currently being worked on by another user, you will now be able to see the name of the other user.


2. We have introduced a new safety stock method that includes the standard deviation of lead time / delivery performance. The new safety stock formula is: {Z*SQRT(Avg. Lead Time * Standard Deviation of Demand^2 + Avg. Demand^2 * Standard Deviation of Lead Time^2)}. It is included in the Forecast Detail Options Tab and is called Lead Time. We recommend using this safety stock only if the lead time performance data is accurate. Companies using blanket orders should verify that the order date being used to calculate lead time performance is not the original blanket order creation date.


3. We have enabled 5% / 95% confidence interval bands in the forecast detail graph. You may enable this by clicking on the confidence interval button in the graph tool bar below the graph.


4. We have made a number of minor capacity interface changes to improve usability and visualization of the data.


5. We have changed the Confidence Index to STABILITY Index to more correctly reflect the meaning of this measure. In short, we are measuring how much the forward looking forecast deviates from the recent past. The basis is that on aggregate the forward looking 13 week average should not deviate excessively from the previous 13 weeks. Even in seasonal products there should be a semblance of balance. As such, when we see a high importance item with a low or negative confidence we want to take another look because there may be something amiss with the analysis.


6. We have added an option to control the default forecast window length. This is managed in the system settings.


7. We have added the capability to view aggregate forecasts in month buckets similar to item forecast view. This is controlled in the tool bar below the graph.


8. We have added the capability to cancel a demand analysis that was launched incorrectly


9. We have added the capability to identify new items that are loaded into DemandCaster from your system (previously not in the DemandCaster database). These new items will receive a unique tag that you define in the Tags UI. This way after each upload you can run a quick filter of the data using the new item tag to identify the new items, then change their settings to make sure they are using the correct planning policy. Once the policy is changed, you can either remove the tag or assign a new tag to the items.


10. Finally, we have significantly improved DemandCaster’s suggested order interface as well as the manner to which suggested orders are edited and approved. More on this new feature in a forthcoming blog posting.

We hope you find these improvements to be helpful. If you have any questions or identify an issue with the changes that have been made please email us at support@demandcaster.com.

Thanks!