Shifting Supply Chain to the Demand Chain

Shifting a supply chain to a demand chain involves making changes to the way a company sources, produces, and delivers goods and services to better align with customer demand. This can involve rethinking traditional approaches to forecasting and inventory management, implementing new technologies to improve visibility and responsiveness, and building closer relationships with customers and suppliers. Some specific strategies that companies can use to shift their supply chain to a demand chain include:

1. Improving forecasting accuracy: Using advanced analytics and data-driven approaches to better predict customer demand can help a company adjust its production and sourcing plans in real-time to meet changing demand.
2. Implementing demand-driven principles: Adopting demand-driven principles such as just-in-time production and pull-based replenishment can help a company better align its operations with actual customer demand.
3. Collaborating with customers and suppliers: Building closer relationships with customers and suppliers can help a company better understand and anticipate demand, and develop more flexible and responsive supply chain processes.
4. Leveraging technology: Using technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and advanced analytics can help a company improve visibility and responsiveness across the supply chain, and make better-informed decisions in real-time.

Overall, shifting a supply chain to a demand chain requires a holistic and strategic approach that involves rethinking traditional processes and leveraging technology and data to better align operations with customer demand.

Workflow management systems support the dynamic definition, execution, monitoring, and modification of business processes. All sorts of processes like opening a bank account, managing a supply chain, or hiring a new employee can be automated. Process control is separated from core business logic (such as a financial portfolio investment strategy, or accounting rules) and from data. This permits flexible adaptation of rapidly changing business processes without having to touch the other elements of the IT system. Workflow management systems are well suited to integrate existing legacy applications into new business processes. Leading workflow management systems are, for instance IBM's FlowMark, FileNet, and extensions of groupware system such as Lotus Notes Prozess Ware. Although the concept offers striking advantages, pure workflow management solutions have had only limited success in specialized application areas. More frequently, package vendors such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Siebel, or Ariba have integrated workflow concepts and engines into their prepackaged offerings, using the workflow component to permit custom-specific tailoring of their packages.
Workflow management systems are typically used to send documents managed by a document management system through the organization. They are particularly well suited to support highly structured business processes. If the workflow is of an ad hoc nature, groupware and messaging systems are used.