Customer demand planning at Lucent Technologies - A case study in continuous improvement through sales forecast auditing

One of the critical drivers of supply chain success is effective customer demand planning. A company must be able to accurately forecast its business opportunities and then effectively plan throughout its supply chain to exploit those opportunities. Unfortunately, many companies fail to understand the importance of effectively forecasting customer demand This article presents a case study of one company-Lucent Technologies-that is committed to continuously improving its ability to effectively forecast customer demand Lucent recently demonstrated that commitment by conducting a sales forecasting audit, performed by external experts, that has had a significant impact on its sales forecasting process and performance. The case study presents the process for conducting a sales forecasting audit, the benefits Lucent has realized from the process, the challenges they continue to face, and the factors that can be applied to other organizations (C) 2000 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.