Question

In the year 2000, Dr. Bowersox and two junior authors wrote a paper titled “Ten Mega-Trends that will Revolutionize Supply Chain Logistics.” One of the trends is forecast to endcast. What does this mean, and why is it important?

Answer 1

In his paper “Ten Mega-Trends that will Revolutionize Supply Chain Logistics.” Dr. Bowersox writes that one of the emerging trends in the market is forecast to endcast. What this means is that businesses tend to focus too much on the forecast aspect of supply chain management process that they tend to forget that the internalization or the internal collaboration between the supply, demand as well as the finances, need to happen in order to transform the forecasts which are not foolproof (as they are based on assumptions) and contains theoretical ideas into actionable supply chain plans for the business. This is a trend that has been followed since the years the paper was wrote in and allows us to understand the value that endcasting or demand management has on the value presented by the forecasts. Forecasts are important for every business even when it presents raw, sometimes inaccurate data about the trends of the future and in order to augment its functionality in the sense it can essentially be utilized by the business without having to worry about its accuracy and reach, we need to make sure that the data it contains has enough variables in the form of all the three possible management areas of supply, demand and the required finance and in turn, allow the business to make decisions based on a more empirically calculable value.

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