‘Demand shaping’ aligns customer trends with supply

from eetimes.com

“Demand shaping” is a demand-driven, supply-constraining customer-centric approach to planning and execution. It aligns process with customer demand at strategic and tactical levels and with an organization’s capabilities, resulting in improved revenue, profitability and market share. It also helps optimize use of resources, reducing excess inventory and improving inventory turns. At the strategic level, the emphasis is on aligning customers’ long-term demand patterns to long-term resource and capacity constraints. At the tactical level, the focus is on understanding demand patterns and then influencing customers’ demand toward available supply, using the levers of price, promotion and products/services bundling.