Commercial advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems have been around for about 25 years and have seen widespread adoption in a variety of companies. The promises made by APS system implementations are high, and at the same time, APS projects are complex, costly, and carry a significant...

In this paper we discuss demand management problems in a multi-stage distribution chain. We focus on distribution chains where demand processes have high variability due to a few large customer orders. We give a possible explanation and suggest two simple procedures that help to smooth demand....