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by David O'Brien , Contributing Editor Posted on Monday, May 01, 2006 1:46:00 PM   An underlying, pervasive requirement for many manufacturing organizations is the need for greater supply chain agility. In this context, agility is the ability to profitably respond to demand across the internal, customer, and supplier networks with a blend of speed, ease, quality, and predictability -- i.e., operational excellence on demand. This agility will enable savvy manufacturers to better compete in an increasingly complex --and dispersed -- manufacturing environment. This environment calls for accommodating a growing mixture of products with shorter lifecycles, more demanding quality, regulatory compliance, and inventory management requirements, and reducing costs while updating old infrastructure. A framework for evaluating operating strategies in this environment is the demand-driven supply network (DDSN). The goal of a DDSN is to enable a profitable response to demand across the full network of suppliers, employees, and customers. AMR Research Inc. has identified three interdependent areas that can benefit from the DDSN model, and several challenges that small to mid-size (SMB) manufacturers face in adopting such a strategy. 1. Sensing, Consolidating, and Shaping Demand: Organizations must develop the ability to sense actual changes in demand, and then combine these signals into a single, unified version of demand intelligence. |