A very high level of forecast accuracy is not possible – so why pursue it?
How much time, resources and budget do you want to invest in non-value-adding forecasting information?
Shouldn’t it be better for your company to invest in other activities with a greater return on investment?
In the past decades, we have learned that planning approaches based on legacy MRP/MPS planning techniques result in a sub-optimized supply chain setup.
Accurate forecasts are impossible at an item level and take no account of supply side planning techniques.
In past engagements, we have demonstrated that with a 100% accurate volume MRP forecast, a demand driven, lean supply planning environment will deliver a 20% working capital benefit over the MRP approach. This is because the timing of the forecast will ALWAYS be wrong because MRP requires the “WHEN something happens” to be as accurate as “HOW MUCH is required” to work effectively. You can learn more about the dangerous co-dependence in our paper on MIT’s findings about forecasts and our own opinions about faster firetrucks doing nothing for fire prevention.
In short, if you base your execution process on flawed MRP forecast data it will always be suboptimal, wrong, and expensive.
Orchestr8 removes your dependency on “WHEN something happens” which means you can better leverage your volume forecast data – eliminating your need for an unreachable level of forecast accuracy.