The Forecast You Can’t Trust: Why Volatility Becomes Inventory You Can’t Sell and Expedites You Can’t Avoid

Recorded date: August 5, 2026
Duration: 34 mins
Guests: Erik Bush and Wally Leasure

Overview

Over the last 30 years, billions of dollars have been spent on enterprise supply chain software. Yet according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve, manufacturer inventory-to-sales ratios remain virtually unchanged since the mid-1990s.

Why are supply chains still stuck in the mud?

Because traditional Material Requirements Planning (MRP) relies on one fundamentally flawed assumption: that your forecast is accurate.

Whether you are dealing with weekly automotive release schedule swings or 60%+ item-level variances in retail, forecast inaccuracy isn’t a performance failure—it’s a structural reality. Chasing precision in an inherently unpredictable market only creates buyer burnout, endless expediting, and millions in tied-up working capital.

Who It’s For

  • Retail and supply chain leaders

  • Demand planners & forecasting managers

  • Operations and planning executives

What You’ll Learn

  • The Reality of Signal Fluctuation: See real-world waterfall analyses showing how 13-week rolling forecasts evolve and distort actual demand in both B2B and B2C environments.

  • The Danger of Misaligned Overrides: Learn how human interventions and category-level aggregations can accidentally amplify the Bullwhip Effect upstream.

  • The 13-Week Waterfall Diagnostic: Step-by-step instructions on how to evaluate 50–100 of your core SKUs to measure your organization’s forecast range severity.

  • Shift to a Demand-Driven Model: Discover how pull-based operating models decouple supply chain noise, pace replenishment to true demand, and drive simultaneous inventory reductions and fill-rate improvements.

Meet the Speakers

Erik Bush

EVP, Internal Operations, Algo

Wally Leasure

Vice President Business Development, Americas

Watch the webinar

Discover why standard MRP assumptions fall short, how signal fluctuation propagates through supply chains, and why transitioning to a Demand-Driven Operating Model can reduce working capital while improving fill rates.