Demand Planning, Forecasting and Inventory
Introduction
Most planning processes and system are rarely driven by the actual demand. Many companies still operate with disconnected systems, fragmented data, and forecasting models that lack business context. As a result, products are made without clear demand, inventory grows in the wrong places, and forecasts remain too complex or too simplistic to guide decisions.
Because demand is the primary driver of inventory, we link demand planning and inventory optimization closely. When demand signals are unreliable, organizations set the wrong safety stock levels, misplace inventory across the network, and struggle to balance service and cost. By integrating both disciplines into one coherent process, companies ensure that every inventory decision reflects true demand behaviour. leading to higher availability, smarter buffers, and lower working capital.
Challenges faced
While some companies sit on massive amounts of data, waiting to be used, they are scattered without clear direction and sometimes never efficiently translated into insights that are of real value. In the same manner, knowledge from commercial, marketing and finance departments are not captured in the planning cycle. Therefore, planning often lacks clear ownership, role distribution and processes across functions. This inevidently leads to slow decision-making that is reactive and disconnected from whats really happening in the market. Additionally, since planning often is all over the place and far from efficient, another common challenge lies in Inventory growth. Safety stocks are set inconsistently and the parameters for replenishment don’t reflect the actual demand or the constraints the current network has. But the good news is that all these challenge can easily be solved through demand planning that can do more than just show numbers on a page, but change the way your departments work, your warehouses look, and your customers experience your service.
Relevance of Capability
With Demand Planning, Forecasting and Inventory, companies achieve...
- Higher Forecast Accuracy
Better data integration, robust processes, and consistent governance for measurable improvements in forecast performance - Increased Agility
Faster adaptation to the latest market trends, commercial opportunities, and supply constraints - Reduced Manual Workload
Efficient forecasting processes and modern digital tools accelerate and automate routine planning activities - Smarter Inventory
Ensures the right products are available in the right quantity and reduces excess and minimizes missed sales - Improved ROI on Inventory
Lower working capital requirements through more precise demand estimation and optimized safety stock levels - Enhanced Collaboration
Clear ownership and shared KPIs that get demand planning, supply, and commercial functions on a unified plan - Network-Wide Inventory Optimization
Holistic visibility across nodes, channels, and geographies prevents sub-optimization, enabling balanced service and cost performance - Science-Based Safety Stock & Parameter Design
Dynamic, data-driven parameter setting improves resilience and reduces cost by aligning buffers with true demand and variability patterns
The Miebach Difference
Miebach helps organizations shift from slow, reactive planning to proactive, data-informed decisions. We build collaborative, business-relevant planning processes that connect theoretical strategy with execution, so that the right products can be at the right place at the right time. With decades of experience across industries and the entire supply chain, we bring both strategic perspective and operational depth. And as a technology-agnostic partner, we focus on what your business truly needs and not what any one tool can offer.
Our capabilities around demand planning, forecasting and inventory include:
Algorithm selection & development
Determine and design the most suitable forecasting algorithms tailored to different demand profiles
Process & organizational design
Define and optimize end-to-end planning processes, ensuring structured integration of critical factors such as promotions, new product introductions and phase-outs (PIPO), regional vs. central planning, channel-specific behavior (e-commerce vs. retail vs. wholesale), and both internal and external market drivers
Tool enablement
Guide the selection and implementation of digital forecasting, demand planning, and inventory optimization tools to deliver measurable value
Advanced planning concepts
Support the adoption of next-generation approaches such as demand-driven MRP, demand sensing, and multi-echelon inventory optimization to increase responsiveness in dynamic environments
Inventory analytics & diagnostics
Evaluate current inventory performance, identify structural inefficiencies, and uncover high-impact improvement levers across the supply chain
Integrated demand & supply planning design
Ensure that forecasting, replenishment, and inventory strategies are aligned
Global project delivery
Execution capability across 21 countries, bringing cross-industry insights, proven methodologies, and the capacity to manage large-scale international projects