20 Questions With a Planning Leader

How did you get into demand planning and supply chain? When I was with Baxter I relocated from Yugoslavia to Belgium and was given responsibility for the surgical gloves supply chain which included some 80 SKUs. I inherited a system whereby sales forecasts would be provided each month from the 20 affiliates who sold the gloves. Instead, I decided to run statistical forecasting models on total European demand. The resulting fore ast accuracy was outstanding, and I used the forecasts for production planning in our Malaysia facility and also calculated reorder points for each affiliate/SKU combination and used them for distribution planning. I fell in love with supply chain and never turned ...