S.F.T. Inc.

Information on BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT

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Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • What is BANDWIDTH MANAGEMENT?
  • Implementing Bandwidth Management
  • How the Demand Planning Tool Helps to Implement Bandwidth Management


  • Introduction

    Since the 1970's the use of minicomputers, and more recently PC-based networks, have enabled manufacturing companies to manage their inventory by use of a Material Requirements Planning process, otherwise commonly known as 'M.R.P.'. Individual requirements for components are derived from bills of material and the current production plan, so that purchase orders for these components can be generated to maintain inventory levels above a minimum level, while at the same time considering the various component purchasing lead times, assembly processing times, economic order quanitities, and so forth. Still, the M.R.P. process itself is only as good as the production plan, where constant changes to the plan 'inside lead time' can easily forfeit any benefits derived from a well-designed M.R.P. system. Sudden changes to the production plan, due to improper forecasting methods, can cause inventory levels to be unpredictably increased, or can cause sudden shortages that inevitably lead to production line-stops, often resulting in 'crash buy' programs and expensive expediting and rescheduling. Alternately, to make up for this front-ended problem, companies will frequently increase their minimum 'safety stock' levels for process-critical components. Whenever such critical components are expensive, the company ends up with too much of its assets tied up in inventory, restricting its ability to react to changing markets, and/or remain profitable in an environment of heavy market competition.

    M.R.P. typically relies on STATIC quantities to perform its analysis, and does not inherently provide any performance feedback to measure production plan accuracy, on-time delivery performance, or the effect of frequent production plan changes, especially those changes 'inside lead time' that affect high dollar components. However, in a business environment that is constantly changing, the use of fixed quantities can easily result in excess inventory, due to a tendency to over-react to worst-case scenarios, and planning for the inevitable 'flood' that never comes.

    Such is the result of 'static analysis' of a dynamic system. The tendency here is to see the highest and lowest values only, and to consider this to be the 'normal range' of values, then plan around these values by keeping inventory levels excessively high to avoid shortages, or increasing order lead times to a length of time that more closely approaches a 'build to order' scenario, even when finished goods are typically in stock when the orders are placed. There are, of course, many contributing factors to these conditions. The greatest single contributor, though, is the 'static analysis' performed on the dynamic system. The solution, therefore, is to perform a 'dynamic analysis' on the demand forecast, production plan, and inventory; and one of the most effective methods of 'dynamic analysis' is Bandwidth Management.


    What is Bandwidth Management?

    The concept of Bandwidth Management involves the use of statistics, based on known history, to define Control Limits that determine the normal ranges for inventory levels, lead times, production rates, backlog, and orders placed by customers. By accurately determining the proper Control Limits, a company can then allow the individual parameters to vary withing these pre-defined Control Limits, and typically take no corrective action so long as these Control Limits have not been exceeded. The net result is that a more stable operating schedule can be obtained, including production, raw material procurement, and shipping. Further, inventory leves can be significantly reduced, as 'worst case' safety stocks will no longer be necessary to ensure that rapid schedule changes will not result in line shortages or excessive customer lead times.

    Material Requirements Planning, or M.R.P., is usually implemented by a Discrete system that operates on individual components, with fixed parameters. A system that uses Bandwidth Management, however, deals with non-linear "Dynamic" parameters. When properly implemented, an existing Discrete M.R.P. system can be used to implement Bandwidth Management, though periodic adjustments would have to be made to the various static parameters to ensure optimum results. Additionally, a way to monitor Performance to Plan is needed, to detect potential problem conditions before they become actual problems. S.F.T. Inc. has provided the Demand Planning Tool for just this purpose.

    How Bandwidth Management Works

    By nature, it is impossible to accurately predict the demand fluctuations placed on a company by its customers. Normal methods of forecasting demand can seem very accurate, using various regression techniques, complex exponential smoothing models, and so on. However, when you apply even the best historically-derived forecast, using the best of regression models, any one sudden and unexpected change in demand can throw the entire forecast out of balance, and potentially cause a series of "reactions" throughout every directly and indirectly affected level of a company, all the way down to the raw stock and finished goods inventories. Normally, company management makes up for this potential problem by maintaining high inventory levels, or by establishing long customer order lead-time requirements, resulting in poor customer satisfaction, increased overhead costs, and ultimately, reduced revenue.
     Normal Distribution Curve
    By calculating the Standard Deviation to the mean for the historic data, it is possible to choose a Z Factor which provides a Confidence Interval that allows for a balance between low inventory levels, and high customer delivery performance. The use of Bandwidth Management therefore assumes that the customer demand will normally fluctuate within such limits of the Normal Distrubution Curve, based upon the Standard Deviation, and a desired Confidence Interval. This calculation forms the Upper and Lower Control Limits, between which the measured parameter (customer order rate, backlog, lead time, inventory levels, and so on) can fluctuate without requiring any corrective action. The standard deviation multiplied by the 'Z' factor, then added to and subtracted from the median value, forms the Control Band, within which normal values of the measured parameter are expected to fluctuate. Actual values that fall within the control band are therefore considered to be "normal", and therefore require no corrective actions. Only those values that fall either above or below the Control Band require analysis, and possible corrective action. Alternately, the control band can be calculated based on a pre-defined minimum or maximum control limit, to which twice the standard deviation times the 'Z' factor is added to (or subtracted from) the minimum (or maximum) value to form the control band. Therefore, by defining a normal control band based on statistically derived parameters, it is possible to significantly reduce the amount of work load for analysis and corrective action regarding nearly any established parameter, whether a demand forecast, inventory levels, customer order backlog, safety stock, or lead time.



    Generally speaking, the statistical model used by Bandwidth Management provides better performance, better control, and fewer "emergencies", even with relatively low Confidence Intervals, than would a non-statistically-based method for controlling schedules and inventories, with respect to normal fluctuations in customer demand. The real key to this is the application of statistical parameters to processes that normally do not utilize them.

    An Example of How it's Used

    Let us define a company, known as 'Company A', that sells an average of 10,000 units of its 'Product B' line per year. Over the last 3 years, by linear regression, they show a relatively constant rate of sales with this product line. However, on a month-to-month analysis, they show a fluctuation between 200 and 2300 units sold within a month, and on a week-to-week basis, the sales range from zero to 1900 units in a single week, during the last 3 years of history.

    The management of 'Company A' is concerned that its inventory levels are too high, although they have kept them high due to constant fluctuations in the production schedule for its 'Product B' line, as the Marketing department has been constantly adjusting the demand forecast that Operations uses to generate its master schedule. Consequently, without high inventories, the sudden demand changes would result in material shortages, line stops, and so on. Further, a large segment of the work force is continuously being laid off and re-hired based on the current needs, and often work 10 or more hours of overtime during the peak periods.

    Therefore, 'Company A' decides to apply Bandwidth Management to their demand forecasting process, and predicts a monthly sales rate of 833 units, with a bandwidth (based on the standard deviation and an 85% confidence interval) of +/- 1870 units. To account for the worst-case demand fluctuation, they maintain an average of 1870 units in finished goods, so that they can provide the 'off the shelf delivery' that their customers demand, under the 'worst case' conditions as defined by the bandwidth. Then, they schedule their production so that a constant 833 units is produced every month. The result of this gives them approximately 23 inventory turns on finished goods for this product, which is outstanding considering that they are providing 'off of the shelf' delivery to their customers.

    Since Operations now has a consistent build schedule, they are able to reduce their raw stock inventories and negotiate better prices with their suppliers on long-term delivery contracts. And, since the raw stock deliveries are not being constantly re-scheduled, their suppliers are more willing to work with them on quality issues and on-time delivery problems from their end as well. And, the shop floor work force is no longer subject to constant layoff and re-hire situations, which improves morale and retains more quality personnel.

    The overall effect on 'Company A's business has been positive. They have reduced their inventories, cut 'hidden' costs due to constant demand changes, improved their ability to react to changes by absorbing the affect over a longer period of time, and improved the morale and quality of the shop floor work force by providing them with more stable employment, and without excessive overtime.

    An Engineering Analogy

    One excellent way to demonstrate the effectiveness of Bandwidth Management can be found in the world of power generation, in a typical steam plant that is designed to respond to varying loads without having a large 'inventory' of water, such as on board a ship. In such a steam plant, you need to maintain water level in the boiler within a specific range. If the level is too high, liquid water will end up in the steam pipe and damage the turbines. If the level is too low, you uncover the tubes (whether it is a fire-tube, a water-tube, or a nuclear 'heat exchanger' boiler) and risk damaging the boiler itself. In addition to this, you have the 'varying demand' on the boiler, as represented by the propulsion system on board a ship, or a widely varying electrical load in a commercial power generating plant. As the demand for steam increases, you must pump water into the boiler at a higher rate than before to maintain the level. Further, the level indicators will show a higher level at higher steam rates due to the increased boiling, as when a pot on the stove boils up and spills over the edges, without having to increase the amount of water in the pot.

    Thus, we define our analogy of a 'manufacturing system' as applied to a boiler. You have raw materials being applied (in this case, water). The inventory parameter we are controlling is the amount of water in our boiler (the warehouse). The production plan (the burner or nuclear reactor) is designed to quickly respond to changes in demand, by rapidly changing the production plan (burn rate) to match forecasted demand (throttle position) and actual demand (steam flow rate). And, we want to avoid cyclically stressing the equipment to prevent damage, and therefore make gradual changes to our water flow and steam production rate.

    In a boiler control system, there are several different approaches that can meet the requirements needed to accomplish the desired task. First, you can use a "bi-stable" method, which starts adding water when level drops to a specific point, then stops adding water when it rises to a maximum point. This is like a 'safety stock' inventory model. To work properly, it requires a large amount of inventory, short lead times on request for new material, but has very high flexibility on demand changes. Unfortunately, suppliers rarely allow orders to be made within such a short lead time, so the safety stock levels end up being high enough to allow for the worst-case lead time. In short, you have too much inventory with this method.

    A slightly better method for inventory control involves a continuous flow and a throttle valve. The throttle valve adjusts the amount of water (raw materials) that are continously being added to our boiler, responding only to changes in level. As level gets too low, the throttle control opens the throttle to allow more water to enter the boiler. However, if the water level drops faster than the throttle's ability to open to match the demand, the level will drop too low. Conversely, if the water level shoots up faster than the throttle's ability to shut, the level will rise too high. Therefore, to compensate for delays in changing the supply rate (purchase and reschedule lead-times) the inventory level is increased to match worst-case supply lead time response, in a 'just in case' scenario.

    However, if 'bandwidth management' were applied to our boiler, it would work something like this:

    The boiler is built to house a minimum amount of water, based on its maximum ability to produce steam and the amount of manufacturing surface required to produce the designed capacity of steam. The steam flow (either booked orders or shipments) is measured and compared to the the feed-water flow rate (supply of raw materials). In addition, the "ideal level" in the boiler is calculated based on the average steam flow rate (shipments or booked orders) over a period of time that is greater than the ability of the throttle valve (purchase orders and re-schedules) to respond to changes in demand. A bandwidth, equal to a multiple of the statistical standard deviation of demand changes over the same period in time as the demand average, is applied on both sides of the ideal level, so that changes in level on either side of the bandwidth cause no change in throttle position (raw material supply). However, if an 'error signal' between supply and demand indicate a change in demand larger than the expected changes inside bandwidth, the throttle valve position changes, to match the 'total error' signal, and maintain inventory level within the control band by anticipating the need before level drops too low. Thus, the danger of 'over-compensation' is eliminated, as well as eliminating the danger that the ability to change supply will not meet the ability to change demand.

    Implementing Bandwidth Management

    In order to properly apply Bandwidth Management principles to your business, it is necessary to have adequate time-phased historic data available that can be analyzed for average, linear regression, and standard deviation information. Alternately, other models can be applied to obtain slightly more accurate median values about which the control bands are assigned, but for all practical purposes an average or linear regression line provides for an adequate (and easily generated) set of control bands. Typically, you will need at least 2 years' worth of historic data, with time-phased data summarized either by week or by day, in order to obtain a meaningful standard deviation. Data which is summarized by a time period greater than one week increases the amount of time needed to detect errors properly, and causes too many "spurious" errors (actual values that fall outside of the established control limits), since the standard deviation is too small to account for normal day to day deviation. On the other hand, information that is summarized by a time period less than one day causes the amount of time to generate the necessary calculations to increase unnecessarily, and may result in control limits that are too large to yield adequate results.

    Example of Implementation using Demand Forecasting

    Because of the impact that an Accurate Demand Forecast can have on the total success of a business, a Demand Forecast will be used for this example on implementing Bandwidth Management. The numbers used here are from an actual company which is experiencing a downward trend in business, forcing them to re-examine various aspects of the business, including forecast accuracy. The graphs shown below were generated using the Demand Planning Tool's Demand Analysis and Forecast modules.


    For this example, we choose a relatively small products family. In this case, it is the 'Rear Projection TV' product family from the Demand Planning Tool's test database, which has a mean Customer Booking revenue of about $450,000 per fiscal month. Since FORECAST information is summarized by fiscal month, the graph is also summarized by fiscal month. The standard error for the linear regression trend line is least for historic data, so it has been used to compare against the current forecast. As you will note, the current forecast is far too small when compared with the linear regression trend line, and may therefore need to be adjusted to more closely match the linear regression trend line. Other factors play a key role in determining an accurate forecast, such as an in-depth knowledge of your customers and the products that they order, but for this example we will assume that the linear regression trend line is accurate. In either case, such forecast inaccuracies will cause problems later on in the form of longer order lead times and greater order backlog for this product family. For this example, we are showing only Revenue information, but in a full analysis the Revenue, A.S.P., and Unit Quantity information would each be analyzed in a similar manner. This process only needs to be done once per month, or once per quarter, unless a problem is detected that requires a change to the forecast.

    Once we have generated an accurate forecast, we can begin measuring performance to this forecast. As orders are placed, they should fall within the control band, based on the specified confidence interval and standard deviation for the historic data. This chart below indicates some of the statistics that we can obtain from the historic data, historic forecast, and current forecast for the product family that we are analyzing. As you can see, actual bookings to forecast has been rather poor. As it turns out, this company had been measuring their performance to shipments, not to bookings. But, in the case of this product family, shipment rescheduling artificially added its own component to the process, which threw off the forecast analysis, leading people to inaccurately believe that their forecast was good. However, from the customer's perspective, the resulting long lead times between order placement and order delivery created a situation of poor customer satisfaction, and a tendency to make large "bulk" orders, resulting in artificial seasonality.


    Ideally, customers should order product as it is needed. A proper use of Bandwidth Management can help to achieve shorter lead times, encouraging customers to make more frequent orders, thus reducing the standard deviation of the booking data, and ultimately improving overall performance for both the customer and the supplier.

    The following chart below shows our current position cumulative booking position within the current fiscal quarter, and the upper and lower control limits that were statistically derived from the historic booking revenue data, and applied to the current quarter's forecast, averaged per week.


    As you can see, the total bookings are somewhat lower than expected, but well within the control limits. However, an instantaneous change in demand may fall outside of the control limits for a single week, and may indicate that a sudden demand change is imminent and that a change must be made to the forecast to compensate for it. Therefore, the following graph shows non-cumulative bookings per week, to help in detecting such changes before they can become problems.

    Again, in this case, the orders are being booked well within the statistical limits, and the forecast appears to be accurate thus far. However, if an order were to be placed that fell outside of the normal control limits, as in the graph below, it would be visually apparent that a potential problem may exist with the forecast. For this analysis, we will move to the highest detail level for products, the product number level, which will show us if any individual product with this product family has a problem with its forecast. As it turns out, one of the products has received an unusual booked order of approximately $80,000 in revenue, when the forecast value per week is only about $1,700. Clearly this indicates a potential problem, which may require corrective action (such as a change to the forecast and production plan).

    The use of Bandwidth Management, in this case, has helped to detect a potential problem very early; in fact, it became apparent that a problem existed within a week of the placement of the $80,000 order by the customer. Further analysis would show who placed the order, and a followup would guarantee that the forecast could be properly updated (if necessary), and production plans altered for this product (as needed) in order to meet the obligations of shipping this product on time to the customers. Without Bandwidth Management, however, it is likely that a problem would not be detected for several more weeks, if at all. Delivery performance would immediately begin to degrade, and customer complaint calls would probably result in a gross over-reaction, including possible "emergency procurement" of parts, overtime for assembly-line workers, subcontract work, and so on. The net result is that NO Bandwidth Management would end up costing money unnecessarily, whereas the use of Bandwidth Management requires only small adjustments to the plan.

    Additional Benefits Gleaned from using Bandwidth Management

    One additional benefit of Bandwidth Management is the exclusion of all but the "problem items" from the list of product and/or customer data that needs to be analyzed. In the case above, only a single product within the entire product family showed any sign of problem; all of the others fell within the established control limits. Therefore, instead of managing 17 individual products, only one needed to be checked. And, if the problem had shown up at the product family level, or the product group level, a further analysis would reveal the actual cause of the problem. So, analysis at the top level (business group, product group, or product family) can be quickly accomplished by senior managers, and the more detail-oriented work (product-level analysis) can be performed by more junior personnel. Still, the actual problems can be detected programatically; any parameter which violates a control limit could generate an "exception signal", and the resulting exception could be reported to the appropriate person on a weekly, or even daily, basis. Such "exception reporting" frees up personnel to do other, more important activities, such as troubleshooting the causes for the various exceptions, and making appropriate corrective actions, rather than spending all of their time immersed in detail, trying to find out whether a problem exists in the first place.

    How the Demand Planning Tool Helps to Implement Bandwidth Management

    The Demand Planning Tool, a product of S.F.T., Inc., is a combined effort of over 5 years of development work, and is designed primarily to allow the user to quickly generate a more accurate forecast, maintain this forecast along with a long-term business plan, and perform daily or weekly Demand Analysis to measure current performance (actual data) to the forecast. It contains a number of screens, graphs, and reports to make this process as easy and fast as possible. The majority of the graphs and screens shown above were generated using the Demand Planning Tool, and were specifically designed with Bandwidth Management in mind.

    Once an accurate forecast has been generated, a vast majority of the customer orders will fall within the statistically based control parameters. To facilitate easy detection of potential problem conditions, the Demand Planning Tool has a screen to perform 'Exception Planning', which generates a pareto listing of demand exceptions, using one of 6 different analyses, in "reverse dollar" order (so that the items with the highest dollar impact will appear at the top of the list). In this way, any items that fall outside of the normal control limits will show up, and the pareto order allows the highest impact items to be dealt with first. Further, since only a fraction of the total number of items are being dealt with, even at the customer and product level, far more real analysis work can be done with fewer man-hours. This, in turn, saves money, and the long term benefits can easily offset the cost of the Demand Planning Tool within a relatively short period of time.



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    Last Update: 10/02/96