Demand management practices in the manufacturing industry: An empirical South African perspective

This paper aims to identify and explore Demand Management (DM) practices used within the South African Manufacturing industry. The study followed a qualitative design approach in order to identify the relationship between DM methods such as forecasting, and the best practices used by the respondents. Therefore, a purposive sampling technique was used whereby a questionnaire was sent out via email to 15 manufacturing companies before meeting them for a face to face interview conducted in two weeks. Respondents varied from different industries such as automotive, wood and paper, chemical, food and beverage, etc. The results demonstrated that although the respondents are aware of the best practices for a good DM system, they generally do not apply them entirely because of factors like fear of implementing change and failure to quickly adapt themselves to the change that would come with those best practices. In addition, the results also revealed that forecasting is the most used DM method by the respondents and a simple forecasting average is used to predict future demand. Depending on the company, the forecast is done either by a team or by functional areas.