Operational
Strategic
Demand Planning Sales and Operations PlanningEngineering Change Management
Integrated Project Management Inventory Management
Order Fulfillment
Aggregate Supply Planning Capacity Planning (Constraints)
Inventory Planning and Optimization
Capacity Planning (CRP) Master Production Scheduling
Supply Action Management
Supplier Collaboration This document outlines the
RapidResponse
Demand Planning
Application
Kinaxis® RapidResponse® allows companies to concurrently and continuously plan, monitor, and respond in a single environment and across business functions.
Kinaxis offers a broad array of supply chain applications supported by RapidResponse’s single data model and analytics engine, and accessed through a common user interface. This allows our customers to use one product to holistically manage multiple supply chain processes. By using a single product instead of combining individual disparate software solutions, our customers gain visibility across their supply chains, can respond quickly to changing conditions, and ultimately realize significant operating efficiencies.
The Building Blocks
The objective of the RapidResponse Demand Planning
application is to create an unconstrained consensus demand
forecast that combines the statistical forecast with multiple
functional forecast perspectives, weighted and adjusted as
part of a highly collaborative process, and all orchestrated
and documented with a single planning system.
The statistical forecast provides an unbiased mathematical forecast of demand based on past historical
performance. RapidResponse takes a specified historical demand stream as a reference and, using various statistical models, will project a future demand forecast. This then becomes an input to the consensus demand planning process, where other forecast streams contributed by the sales, marketing, and finance teams are evaluated as a group, and are combined and adjusted to form the final consensus demand forecast.
While the RapidResponse Demand Planning application aids companies to build a better plan, the challenge in today’s volatile environment is that the forecast will never be completely right. With this in mind, RapidResponse empowers companies with the ability to combine demand planning with a strategic capacity to continuously monitor and adjust the portions of the demand plan that present a variance.
The Added Value of Integrated Applications
Among the greatest advantages of any given RapidResponse application is the ability to leverage it in conjunction with other applications as part of a broader, integrated solution.
Depending on the need, significant added benefits can be achieved by using the Demand Planning application alongside one or more related
applications to ensure synchronization across interrelated planning processes. Companies that use the Demand Planning application will have also subscribed to the S&OP application, and can also achieve broader value by using it with the Aggregate Supply Planning application.
Demand Planning
Inventory Planning & Optimization Order Fulfillment Capacity Planning (CRP) Engineering Change Management Supplier Collaboration Integrated Project Management Capacity Planning (Constraints) Sales & Operations Planning Demand Planning Master Production Scheduling Aggregate Supply Planning Supply Action Management Inventory ManagementInput forecast (in units or revenue) from various
constituents (sales, marketing, finance, statistical forecast) and utilize disaggregation functionality to drive demand into saleable SKUs
Compare actuals, current demand plan, annual plan, aggregate supply plan, prior approved demand plan, and the demand plan from previous year in a time-phased graphical view
Monitor the forecast accuracy for all forecasts
Detect and “cleanse” historical data to remove data errors, outliers, and causals
Define statistical forecast generation parameters according to the different statistical models available Define NPI/EOL statistical forecast generation variables Generate statistical forecast scenarios
Edit combination of ratios of various forecast categories Adjust or override the calculated demand plan for specific
forecast items in specific date ranges
Publish consensus demand plan to aggregate supply planning
Monitor progress against targets Manage assumptions
Role Responsibility
S&OP Process Owner The S&OP process owner monitors the overall S&OP process, including the demand planning component, to ensure that decisions are made on time and the process is moving along to expectations.
Finance Finance maintains the financial targets and limits in the annual plan. They monitor and report on
performance against those targets and maintain the finance operating plan. They will also contribute their input to the demand forecast.
Demand Planners It is the demand planners role to enter the adjustments and overrides to the consensus plan in such a way as to create a realistic forecast and still represent all the various parties with vested interests (finance, sales and marketing as well as operations). This is the role that owns the consensus forecast itself.
Cleaning up the historical actual data and generation of the statistical forecast is also the role of the demand planner.
Sales Sales contributes their input to the demand forecast, and ensures that the resulting consensus forecast represents their view.
Marketing Marketing contributes their input to the demand forecast, and ensures that the resulting consensus forecast represents their view.
Performing Demand Planning with RapidResponse
The functional capabilities of the Demand Planning application include:
In the Demand Planning application, collaboration occurs across these functional roles:
The RapidResponse Demand Planning application provides the following benefits:
Improved demand forecast accuracy and demand planning process cycle time improvement
Demand collaboration across functions (sales, marketing, finance, demand planning) for holistic planning and analysis across a range of planning scenarios and action alternatives
Ability to integrate demand functions with other supply chain functions, including product lifecycle management Better visibility to monitor and manage performance against targets
Demand Planning Process Components
*May leverage RapidResponse capabilities included in the Demand Planning application, or input data
from another source.
Condition sales data
1
Prior to the collection of demand inputs, sales actual data should be conditioned to: Account for demand error and causals in historical demand actuals (e.g. promotions) Review remaining data outliers and adjust as required
Collect demand inputs
2
Across finance, sales, and marketing:
Review current performance against company metrics Review forecast
accuracy and value add measurements
Review open assumptions and update forecast (units, $)
Share forecast and assumptions Generate statistical forecast (optional capability*) 3
Review historical statistical forecast accuracy and data errors
Define and configure new forecast items
Override default disaggregation rates Generate the statistical
forecast
Publish statistical forecast
Manage NPI Parts which don’t exist in ERP master data feed
Manage linkages between NPI/EOL parts and customers, sources, and constraints
Manage NPI/EOL profiles
Define NPI / EOL
(optional capability*) 4
Create consensus demand plan
5
Across finance, sales, marketing and statistical forecasting Review the various demand inputs
Adjust consensus demand weights and/or time-phased demand planning ratios as applicable Adjust calculated demand plan at aggregate or disaggregate level as applicable
Document assumptions
Approve consensus demand plan
6
What-if
Analysis CollaborationRole-Based
Consequence Evaluation and
Alerting Supply Chain
Analytics
Unique RapidResponse Capabilities
Rapid What-If Analysis and Deep Supply Chain Analytics
Our patented what-if simulation technology enables users to rapidly create many versions of their supply chain environment (called a scenario), regardless of data size, to simulate changes in real-time without impacting the live data. Thousands of simulations can be supported concurrently within a single instance of RapidResponse.
•
Users can test numerous what-if scenarios against key performance indicators and compare them to each other or to a baseline.•
Scenario parameters are not limited, so users can simulate any number or combination of changes related to supply, demand, bill of material, business policy, capacity, costs and/or pricing.•
RapidResponse analytics continuously and automatically calculate results in response to changing inputs.•
RapidResponse has the ability to mimic ERP data models to ensure calculations are consistent across disparate systems.Collaboration and Responsibilities
Collaboration in RapidResponse is event-driven and is achieved through the creation and sharing of scenarios with all responsible parties. Users collaborate around a particular what-if analysis and are doing so in the same system from which they are drawing the data, and in which they will execute the resolution.
•
Users create a scenario and share it with the appropriate users and include a message about what issue they requireassistance on, or feedback for.
•
The Responsibility capability will automatically identify the users whohave ownership over certain data, who can then be invited to
participate in a collaborative scenario simulation.
•
Collaborators can create a child scenario of the parent collaboration scenario in order to simulate any required actions.•
The requestor can keep track of the collaboration progress, the alternatives that are being considered, and which changes should be made.Exception-Driven Analysis
RapidResponse’s exception-based analysis focuses on evaluating events and actions based on their potential impact to the business. It is never enough to know that something has occurred. You need to understand the context, the consequence, and the next steps.
•
Results of what-if scenario simulations are presented in the context of their impact to performance.•
Users can monitor and be alerted to specific supply chain risks (e.g. late supply) or specific conditions (e.g. a certain metric will be negatively impacted as a result of a particular event or the cumulative effects of a series of events).Managing Performance
In addition to the standard corporate measures of revenue, margin, inventory value, on-time delivery and
constraint utilization, metrics associated specifically with demand planning are also included in the application’s
out-of-the-box dashboards. This allows for focused management of the performance measures that are most applicable to the function at hand.
Measures presented in the Demand Planning dashboard include:
Consensus Demand Plan: A comparison of each forecast stream in value ($) against the demand plan and
annual plan.
Forecast Accuracy Exceptions: Summary of the number of forecast items where the measure is above the
critical limit for the selected category of forecast.
Data Errors/Outliers: Summary of the number of data errors or data outliers within the historical actuals
that need to be cleansed through the sales data conditioning process.
Forecast Value Add: An indication if each forecast stream is more or less accurate than the naïve forecast
(the historical actuals of the previous period).
The measure of success of the statistical forecast sub-process is to check the accuracy of the generated forecast. RapidResponse supports a variety of ways to measure such accuracy including:
Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) Volume Error Value Error MAE/Mean Bias (MPE) Stability (MAPD) Mean Error
Mean Absolute Error (MAE)
Demand Planning Dashboard
Getting Results
Kinaxis RapidResponse enables customers to drive tangible business outcomes by both improving and accelerating analysis and decision making within and across supply chain functions.
Forecast Response Times Cut in Half
“
”With RapidResponse, our forecast response to the
customer has improved by at least 50 percent.
It has also enabled customer planning collaboration,
thus improved forecast planning.”
”
Source: IT Manager, Large Enterprise Electronics Company
TechValidate ID: A73-CC8-02D
Displaced SAP APO
“
“RapidResponse added Demand Planning
functionality and displaced SAP APO. It improved
forecast accuracy and reduced planning cycle
times.”
”
Source: Operations Manager, Fortune 500 Telecommunications Equipment Company
TechValidate ID: 105-A8B-DA0
