Balansen mellan kundernas krav och företagets förmåga att leverera rätt produkter vid rätt tidpunkt.
En fallstudie av Clas Ohlsons efterfrågestyrning.
Background: Today?s market offers customers many more possibilities to choose than before. With that the customer?s requirements on the company have become higher, products of the best possible quality to the less possible price when the customer demands them,specially concerning seasonal products that become out of date when the seasontime has finished.In the recent years the Supply chain management technic has gott attention because of its succesfully way to integrate the companys business processes. Demand Management is an important part of that technic since demand management is dealing with managning thedemand, with the pourpose to find the balance between supply and demand. In this way the company can satisfy its custormers needs effective and creates good relationships with them.Companies that do not succeed to manage the demand, run the risk of taking away from the market.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how Clas Ohlson handles the demand of seasonal products.Method: Because this study is a case study of Clas Olhsons demand management, the author has used personal interviews as primary material. The persons interviewed have leading positions within Clas Ohlson. The secondary material consists of information from the annual account, personnel magasine, homepage, etc. The secondary material is a complement of the primary material. In this way the problem will be analyse from different perspectives.Conclusion: Today is Clas Ohlson a successful company thanks to the companys product mix, the prices, specially seasonal products which have good prices, and the customer service.Clas Ohlson is expanding in Sweden and vill expand outside the Skandinavien in the comming years as well. The company?s business processes work good. The question is whether Clas Ohlson is going to manage to satisfy its future customers demand using its traditional methods in those business processes which have a big impact on the demand.Clas Ohlson needs to improve its informationflow. The informationflow and the materialflow have to work together more effectively. This can achive with help of modern technic within information technology. It is true that Clas Ohlson has considered the posibility to use technical solutions, but no final desicions have be made. The company was in the opinion that such solutions weren?t bring benefits to the company at the time the discussion was going on.