One of the most difficult aspects of this project was in the language of demand planning; the planning and commit managers used and expected vocabulary that was highly specific. Additionally, there were a number of complicated dependencies dictating which fields should be editable and by whom; for example, lag time was dictated by the channel and not by any individual, where target inventory was to be editable by all planners.
This diagram was initially used for the development team to better understand the implicit timeline that occurs each time inventory is planned or committed. As the software grew, this diagram was actually made available, in an interactive fashion, to the managers who set up the various spreadsheets. They were able to customize the relationship between planning, commitment and shipment on a SKU level.
