Important information about Supply Chain

1. What role does competitive intelligence play in international business forecasting? Which qualitative techniques are most affected by international differences?

2. Why are master production schedules necessary for manufacturers? In what ways do master production schedules help organizations to become more efficient?

3. For those of you who are into "forecasting," here is a question that is used during interviews of Master's degree candidates for jobs in consulting. As such, the respondent doesn't have too much time to think about the answer. For fun -- how would you answer this question during an interview?

"You are visiting a new client who sells golf balls in the United States. You are there to consult to them on strategic planning opportunities in the golf ball market. Having had no time to do background research, you sit on the plane wondering what is the annual market size for golf balls in the United States and what factors drive demand?

Your plane lands in 15 minutes, how would you go about answering these questions?"
Hint: There are 300 million people in the United States

There is no one right or wrong answer to this problem. The interviewer wants to see how you think out of the box on this one! This problem comes from a web site from the NYU Stern School of Business (New York University's graduate business school). Here is what the authors had to say about the problem ----- This type of case is very common, particularly in strategy firms like McKinsey and Bain. The interviewer doesn't care much about the actual number (although how fast you do math in your head can be important), but rather wishes to see a logical process for reaching some kind of answer. Try to come up with an answer without going to the internet or doing other research. I just want to see how you approach the question. I'll illustrate an example of the answer later this week. No right or wrong answer, it's not a test. Just something to illustrate a forecasting problem.