Büttner, D.: A reference model for quantitative Sales Planning within Supply Chain Planning. Series "Fortschritte in der IT in Produktion und Logistik", Vol 6. Göttingen: Cuvillier 2023.

Manufacturing companies have to deal with a variety of challenges to supply consumers, such as high volatility in the sales market and global distribution networks. In the consumer goods industry, consumers determine the success of companies by purchasing products. To supply the sales market as quickly as possible, products have to be produced before demand arises and brought close to the consumer. Thus, these companies depend on forecasting future sales of their products in order to manage the supply chain according to the demand. The responsibility for creating forecast information, which is considered the basis for supply chain planning, lies with sales planning. Currently, Sales planning makes inadequate use of data, even though academia has recommended basing decisions on the analysis of data for years. In addition, challenges such as insufficient skills, diversity of methods, and unclear processes inhibit the use of data and consequently quantitative methods. This reference model for quantitative sales planning addresses these challenges and consolidates existing knowledge in the domain of sales planning. Thus, the reference model serves as a guide for the integration and improvement of quantitative sales planning in companies and facilitates access to knowledge. The model systematizes the planning process, forecasting methods - from naive methods to machine learning - and mandatory and optional forecast data within three maturity levels. The model reduces the effort to develop use case-specific sales planning, supports the generation of sales-related knowledge, and promotes the use of data for supply chain planning and as a result, the maintenance of competitiveness of the applying companies