The Shocking truth about Alignment to Forecast

Many businesses consider alignment to forecast as their primary metric to become better.
I believe that this metric is putting you on the wrong path.

Instead,
Build your processes and supply chain which can quickly identify what the customer needs. And supply to each store or warehouse exactly what THAT location needs.

A common approach to measure the Supply Chain efficiency is alignment to forecast. 
This drives many organizations to optimize the supply chain to deliver the “number”. 

For example: 
We plan and send inventory in our warehouses and stores according to a pre-defined plan. We call our supply chain ‘Efficient’ If we managed to populate the inventory as per the plan.

But, forecasts are never accurate at Store – SKU – Time level. 

Are you sure that a supply chain working on a pre determined plan will be able to respond to changes in market?

We limit our performance to our ability to predict the demand. This results in many shortages and excesses.