The global chip shortage a few years ago shone a spotlight on the supply chain planning complexity that has always characterized High Tech companies. It is difficult for semiconductor companies, consumer device manufacturers, and other High Tech companies to profitability match supply with demand, especially in today’s volatile marketplace. While consumer demand is a moving target, High Tech manufacturing does not naturally lend itself to agility and flexibility.

First, a globally dispersed manufacturing and supply network causes production cycles to be long and geographically complex, as well as asset intensive. And product life cycles are short, fueled by ongoing innovation. High Tech companies can’t afford to build up huge amounts of buffer inventory to prepare for demand swings — it’s too easy to be left with expensive, outdated products that won’t ever be sold.

Second, consumers expect high levels of availability when they shop for smartphones, laptops and other products. They want the newest product, now. And they want it delivered quickly on their terms.

Third, while geopolitical conflicts and natural disasters affect every supply chain, High Tech companies are especially vulnerable to disruptions. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has endangered the global supply of palladium, nickel and neon, three critical materials for semiconductor manufacturing. Both Red Sea and the Suez Canal shipping lanes have been blocked by conflicts in the Middle East, increasing costs and lead times for High Tech companies importing products from Asia. And, as the U.S. imposes new tariffs on Chinese imports, there’s an increasing risk that China will retaliate with higher costs for raw materials, chips and other components.

There’s no getting around it: High Tech manufacturers face enormous challenges every day in getting the right product to the right place at the right time — and doing so profitably across thousands of supply chain miles.

Power up demand planning success — with real-time visibility

It’s clear that High Tech manufacturers can only overcome these challenges if they can achieve real-time visibility — both into upstream supply and downstream demand.

Yet the static, long planning cycles, manual processes and outdated tools still in use at many High Tech companies don’t enable real-time visibility. Demand planning is siloed from supply and production. Data isn’t shared. There are no clear priorities when it comes to assigning constrained manufacturing capacity or materials. Lacking real-time visibility, collaborative planning and consensus, High Tech companies typically hedge their bets — trying to achieve the right balance between overstocks and out-of-stocks, between wasted inventory and lost sales.

Amid these challenges, there is good news. Developments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data science have created the real-time demand planning capabilities that High Tech manufacturers desperately need.

Enabled by AI and ML, modern demand planning solutions enable planners to accurately sense trends and forecast market shifts — well before they occur. Decision engines ingest hundreds of demand-driving variables to accurately predict the future. While some are specific to the High Tech industry, many are not — including new product introduction, macro-economic trends, inflation, competitive product introductions, and even price breaks or promotions.

By leveraging these modern solutions, High Tech companies can stay aligned with changing consumer and customer needs. The end-to-end supply chain can respond in a rapid, orchestrated manner as demand shifts, because all stakeholders are working from a single version of the truth.

How can planning teams be sure the forecast is right, and they’re making profitable decisions? Today’s advanced demand planning solutions also allow for numerical simulation of outcomes. Demand planners can define an optimal course of action, based on real-time demand signals and enterprise data. Then they can test their plan in a risk-free virtual environment before they move to the execution stage.

Plug into better results with Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning

Leading High Tech companies are already rebooting their traditional demand planning approach with Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning. This next-generation solution leverages advanced AI and real-time data to support:

  • Autonomous mix-and-match with real-time causal analysis. We all know intuitively that the demand forecast for any supply chain is impacted by several influencing factors. But which are most important? If demand planners understand cause-and-effect at a deep level, can they actually shape demand? Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning empowers High Tech planning teams to leverage the best combination of statistical methods and market-leading AI and ML algorithms to develop highly accurate demand forecast across different regions, time horizons, customer segments, and product lines.
  • Intelligent scenario planning. Cognitive Demand Planning enables planners to gather cross-functional, as well as external, data as it changes to accelerate and improve their decision processes. They can compress planning cycles from months or weeks to mere minutes — allowing them to plug into the current demand situation. Fueled by data, they can create realistic scenarios that predict the outcome of their plans in advance. By sharing their current perspective — as well as their future outlook — with suppliers, High Tech companies can stabilize supply-demand variability. They can minimize the risk of excess inventory, as well as accurately seize revenue opportunities.
  • A unified planning process. Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning is purpose-built to connect data and business processes in real time, both upstream and downstream. High Tech manufacturers can streamline and accelerate enterprise-wide decision-making across stakeholders, reducing siloes. They can align supply planning and production planning with real-time customer demand signals, achieving up to a 12% improvement in forecast accuracy with over 75% increase in demand planner productivity.

Chip away at your competitors with leading-edge capabilities

There’s no doubt that High Tech demand planning is complex. But Blue Yonder has listened to the needs of our High Tech customers and responded with a powerful solution that reduces latency by capturing accurate demand signals, drives greater agility to support short product lifecycles, and automates planning to boost productivity and competitiveness. 

Blue Yonder Cognitive Demand Planning revolutionizes High Tech supply chains with advanced analytics, real-time simulations and integrated collaboration. It enables faster, more confident and more profitable decisions. Learn more here.