After attending numerous DDMRP conferences and reviewing countless case studies, certain recurring themes have become evident. Despite being repeatedly highlighted—at last year’s DD World, the year before, and so on—they seem to be quickly forgotten.

of each case study. They are always the same messages over and over again (they were the same at last year’s DD World and the year before). So it seems to me that we learn them but then they get forgotten very quickly.

I decided therefore to write this 10 Commandment for successful DDMRP implementation. I include here a short description for each one of them and I may expand some of these descriptions in later articles (for some of them you could write an entire book).

They are numbered from 1 to 10 in a more or less random way, so the number isn’t reflecting the importance.

Please enter your thoughts in the comment section. Do you agree with this list? Would you add or remove something? How would you prioritise them?

So here they are, my 10 commandments for (successful) DDMRP implementation.

#1 Thou shalt educate your people, including your top level leaders

This is fundamental because your leaders must fully understand the methodology and the full impact of it to the entire organisation in order to be able to fully endorse and support it. This is a quote from Nick Lynch from Shell during an interview with Laura Cecere: “In many cases in supply chain leadership don’t really understand how stuff works, and if you are going to make changes with stuff that you don’t understand that could be quite risky and have unintended consequences“.

#2 Thou shalt focus on speed & quality of implementation

If you are about to implement DDMRP it’s because you believe that the speed of flow – not cost – is the driving force behind ROI. Hence, you should use the same thinking in your DDMRP implementation project and ask yourself “what will drive the ROI of this project?” There are three things that you can control in a project: cost, time and quality. The ROI of your implementation will be determined primarily by speed and quality, not by cost. And yet we see over and over again organisations trying to cut corners to save on cost and then pay the price with poor quality and delays, or both. Make sure the right amount of resources are deployed to get the project live in 3-6 months with good quality design and implementation: this is the best recipe for a successful DDMRP implementation with high ROI.

#3 Leadership shalt be fully committed to the effort

A strong leader sponsoring the project is key. This person should be clearly visible at all levels in the organisation and be able to remove roadblocks. Importantly, this person should be fully committed and show passion for what he or she is doing. He must also understand the importance of commandments #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

#4 Thou shalt turn OFF your legacy planning system on the day of go live.

I have been asked once shortly before going live with DDMRP: “Wouldn’t it be good for the planners to run both systems in parallel during the first few months so that they can compare DDMRP recommendations against their traditional planning screen and get confidence in the new system?”

The answer is simply: NO.

#5 Thou shalt involve all part of your organisation early on

Really. Success will eventually be determined not by the fact that DDMRP is a superior way of planning (it is), but by the fact that the entire organisation is re-aligned to this new and different way of doing things and focused on promoting the flow of relevant materials and information. For this to happen they need to know what’s going on from the start.

#6 Thou shalt enforce the new rules and ways of working

You should educate your people, train them, re-educate them, re-train them, but eventually you need to ensure that the new ways of working are followed by everybody. This means re-aligning the incentives and for this you need to have top management support and HR as well. Finally, strong leadership will be required.

#7 Thou shalt focus on reliability metrics first

You can have the best processes in place, but if people aren’t following them, then it’s all for nothing. The Demand Driven Operating Model comes with a set of operational (reliability, stability, speed & velocity) and tactical metrics. The most important metrics at the very start of an implementation are the reliability one: are people working according to process and market expectation? Are they passing the right signal at the right time according to the new rules and ways of working? If not, then why? what did we miss (you probably ignored one of more of these commandments)?

#8 Thou shalt change the incentive structure

When you start doing DDMRP – typically as a pilot – it is often considered to be a low impact initiative limited to planning. But remember that in a traditional environment the plant is driving the plan, not demand. And so your low-level DDMRP pilot will immediately create a wave through the organisation.

Your plant managers can’t manipulate anymore the volumes they are getting (in the operational time frame at least – in the tactical horizon there is still a lot they can do) and if they try to do so then the DDMRP metrics will immediately show it: DDMRP creates a lot of transparency. Therefore, you need to change the way plant performance is measured. You need to change from a unit cost focus to a flow and throughput focus: maximisation of plant throughput (of sellable goods) with minimum amount of stock and WIP.

#9 Thou shalt clean up your master data

Many companies use lots of excel to do planning. When this happens then inevitably the master data in their ERP is not kept up to date and before implementing DDMRP there is some effort necessary to clean up things. The nice thing about implementing DDMRP is that people will actually be using the system to do planning, and therefore there will be a strong incentive for keeping planning master data (like lead times and MOQ) properly maintained.

#10 Thou shalt learn to crawl, then walk and then run

You won’t become a Demand Driven Adaptive Enterprise in one step. Most companies start with DDMRP and they run a pilot as a first step. Make sure the pilot objectives are clear to everyone and well stated. One important objective for a pilot is to demonstrate how the different bits and pieces fall together: planning, scheduling, execution, DDS&OP, financial and non-financial metrics. If you achieve this then the leadership will understand what are the implications of becoming Demand Driven and will understand what is needed to deploy these concepts across the organisation as a whole. Now you are in the best position to plan the further roll-out of the methodology.