DEMAND CHAIN MANAGEMENT: The Main Techniques Used by Production Engineering in the Demand Management Process

This paper aims to show the main demand chain management techniques used by production engineering in the forecasting process. The demand management is a strategic process to direct the present decisions toward a competitive position in the future. The success of manufacturing engineering depends directly on the alignment of demand chain. Initially, carried out a literature review on the topic of demand management and forecasting, then, defines the methodology and methods used. Regarding the classification of this work is a survey research approach with qualitative and quantitative level of applied research and exploratory focus. Data were collected exclusively by internet and the survey address was available online between the 23 January 2012 and 2 April 2012, this range 50 people responded to the questionnaire. The study showed that companies maintain high priority on statistical forecast and low priority on techniques like automatic outlier detection and cannibalization analysis.