If a customer is shouting, but you don’t have the right platform in place to be heard, do they make a noise? The sad truth is that the first noise many companies often hear is customers complaining because no one really knew how to listen to their needs.

A recent McKinsey & Company survey of 113 supply chain leaders worldwide, representing organizations from a broad range of industries, showed that 71% of respondents were expecting to revise their inventory policy. A significant 74% also noted that capturing the demand signal was a priority. This type of thinking is why Molex has placed such a significant focus on the Global Sales and Operations Planning and Execution (GSOP&E) process. The voice of the customer and their respective demand is the foundational starting point for GSOP&E. It drives the alignment of our products, services and supply chain by translating what the customer is saying into tangible actions that enable us to meet their expectations.  

Demand Planning is the phase of the process used for aligning to the voice of the customer. The Consensus Forecast is one of the core outputs of this phase. The Consensus Forecast combines inputs such as what the sales team is hearing from customers and what product managers are hearing from a market perspective. The goal is to reach consensus between these teams and get the best signal moving forward to drive decisions on critical planning in areas such as raw materials, machine and labor capacities. The Consensus Forecast helps Molex to realign its supply chain with what the customer actually needs, not just what the supply chain is able to provide at the moment. The result is shorter lead times to fulfill customer orders and the ability to service the customer at a higher level.

At Molex, we have over 100,000 part numbers (SKU’s) in our product catalog. We analyze past order history combined with predictive modeling to automate portions of our forecasts to enable our team to focus on the changes that really matter to the customer. But we rely on this type of historical modeling for only part of the forecast because changes in markets and customer intentions also play a significant role. Customer input is an essential part of this process. From our largest customers to our smallest, we leverage direct customer input about what they're going to be purchasing from us or what they expect to sell to their own customers to forecast anywhere from one to 24 months (about 2 years) into the future. 

To be truly effective, Demand Planning and the Consensus Forecast must be iterative, adaptive and continual. We process these inputs on a weekly and monthly cadence to adjust the Consensus Forecast — and our downstream supply planning to that forecast — to match the speed of the market with continuous process improvement. 

Part of Molex’s Demand Planning process includes major account reviews where we work to understand what’s dynamically changing within our customer’s business. We perform regular product and market reviews to understand what changes in product strategy may be required to align our plan with that of the customer’s future intentions. And it’s from the customer’s input that we gain the enrichment necessary to refine our statistical forecast and, ultimately, our Consensus Plan.  

At Molex, Demand Planning creates much stronger alignment between our product management, sales and demand planning teams. This enables us to produce the most accurate Consensus Forecast numbers possible to support our customers’ business needs. By uniting previously disparate inputs into a clear signal that we are able to action, we can respond to the voice of the customer with the full attention it deserves. It’s how we can help our customers maintain business continuity in an era of constant supply disruptions. But equally important is our ability to maintain a level of preparation and agility that keeps pace with our customers’ strategic plans and helps them to maintain a competitive edge as they innovate new products and product enhancements planned for the future.