Collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment: a case study in copper clad laminate industry

Intense competition, rapidly declining prices, unpredictable customer demand, and constrained material supplies are facts of life in the global copper clad laminate (CCL) market. Collaboration across the supply chain has become a crucial element in the creation of business value in such a complex manufacturing environment. The collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) process is a powerful tool to enhance the cooperation between partners from upstream to the vendor/suppliers and downstream to the customer. In this paper, we applied the CPFR process in Hong Kong CCL industry for validation in manufacturing field. In the past CPFR pilot cases, most of these were concentrated on the grocery industry. As there are significant differences between the grocery and copper clad laminate businesses, the modified model for implementing the CPFR with the consideration of the engineering change control in order to enhance the responsiveness to the market change is proposed to account for the differences.