Demand management at the donut shop

[Randy Littleson]

We were heading up to our cottage in the north on the May two four weekend (Canadians would know why I said two four instead of 24 and yes, Canadians actually head North for vacation – are we crazy??). This is one of the busiest Canadian extended weekends as many people are opening up their cottages for the summer and more and more baby boomers own cottages now.


We stopped in at the donut shop to grab a box of donuts to take with us. To our surprise they were out of donuts!! I asked “How can you possibly run out of donuts on a long weekend?? A donut shop running out of donuts!!”
She replied, “I know…I am very sorry.”
Then with a puzzled look she said “The funny thing is that this happens to us every year on this weekend!”


The morale of the story is that you probably take your donut availability for granted but even the donut shop needs to practice good demand management and respond to demand changes!


Carol McIntosh is a Business Consultant for Kinaxis, provider of the on-demand RapidResponse service that empowers multi-enterprise manufacturers with the collaborative and integrated demand-supply planning, monitoring, and response capabilities.

[wesdavidson]

Local hardware store ceased buisiness after about 100 years because "we can't keep that in stock, try back after we place our monthly order". They kept running out of things and couldn't understand why they didn't make more money.

[seki]

Another example of "inventory management by walking around". You reorder your stock by wandering through the stockroom and jotting down what looks like it is about to run out. Once something does run out, it falls off the list and is never seen again. My local grocery store does that.