Please answer the following questions 1 and 2 based on the case study below.

Demand Management Case Study It is late July, early August of 2004. You are a sales analyst who is part of a team that manages the Wal- Mart (headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas) account for a sporting goods manufacturer in Portland, Oregon. One of the product categories you manage is hunting accessories. Hunting accessories typically ship the initial orders to load the stores, at the start of the season, at the end of July. Replenishment orders will be placed by Wal-Mart through November/December depending on the location of the store and the state hunting seasons. You have received and shipped the initial store load orders, but the replenishment orders the following week are abnormally low compared to the prior couple of years. When you receive the second replenishment orders the next week (second week after the initial store load), they are extremely low again. You contact Wal-Mart, expressing concern that their new, and very expensive, forecast and replenishment system may be incorrectly ordering product. The Wal-Mart replenishment manager you are working with brushes off your concerns. In fairness, the replenishment manager has responsibility for a wide array of products; hunting accessories are a very small product line relative to this managers total responsibility. Among other things, this manager is currently contending with shipment problems from a new vendor of a major product line. You realize its time to do some in depth analysis because you fear that stores may actually stock out losing sales for your company, Wal-Mart, and maybe other companies selling hunting related products. You have access to your companys historical order and shipping data, historical sales data, Wal-Mart system forecast data (including past sales), store stock levels and out of stocks, and hunting season calendars by state.

Q1: What do you think may be happening in Wal-Marts system? What issues may you need to consider around forecasting, replenishment, and demand management? What analysis would you want to do to confirm what is happening? What questions would you try to answer? (As stated above, you have access to historical data from both your own company and from Wal-Mart.)

Q2:If you confirm that there is an actual problem with Wal-Marts system, how would you approach Wal- Mart in regards to the problem and what support would you provide to be able to solve the problem (both internally, at your company, and externally, at Wal-Mart)?