Forecasts
This activity and its outcome is perhaps the greatest source of friction between sales and marketing on one side and the other operations. But Why do those frictions? The answer is basically a single because forecasts are not met and as much, the discussion tends to be eternal on the one hand people in sales and marketing is complaining because it often makes deliveries Incompletas or not makes them due to lack of inventory and also in that same line delivery times extend to creating a great discontent among the clients that the sales people must dealall this because according to them, production fails to respond quickly to the requirements of the market or because you don’t keep inventories that are needed and if asked to production will also be annoying because marketing and sales not reported them correctly and timely projections of sales in each of the references and product families, therefore if they don’t have this information fairly well and in time it will be almost impossible that the plant react in time and can properly plan inventory levels of product finished and semi-finished to meet you sales and still less a plan of production which is aligned with demand. It is of course also the common fact that the forecasts provided by marketing and sales are not met, hand sold less than committed in some references and on the other hand sold more than anticipated in others, with the result at the end of that month but the company has high inventory levels at the same time to lost sales for missing inventory. A paradox, isn’t it? Well, if we want to avoid the above situation the only way is concentrating on how to improve forecasts. In subsequent articles we will address methodologies, statistical models and other topics pointed to count on accurate forecasts and to help with certain tranquility business decisions.