Demand chain management as a competitive advantage for firms and application of quality function deployment to demand chains

Today?s intense competitive markets and changing demand patterns urge firms increase customer satisfaction and generate value for customers. Therefore, firms need to coordinate and cooperate with the members of the supply chain they belong to and must establish synchronized information flow in order to survive and sustain their competitive advantage. Furthermore, advancements in the production and information technologies enable firms to become more customer oriented to increase customer satisfaction. For this reason, efficiency the primary aim of the traditional supply chain management alone, is thought to become insufficient to sustain competitiveness. Thus, demand chain management, having both efficiency and effectiveness features, emerges aiming to produce goods/services according to market requirements.The objective of the study is to put forward the evolution of the demand chain management by observing the advancements in technology, changes in the demand patterns and market structure. Another objective of this study is to answer the question of how to integrate demand chain management and modern quality function deployment, an updated version ofquality function deployment, which is a systematic method to produce goods/services according to customer needs. Applying modern quality function deployment to demand chain management is thought to improve the effectiveness feature in demand chains.Hence, a sample case study is conducted on a firm producing door handles operating in aluminium accessories sector. Demand chain structure of the corresponding product is revealed and modern quality function deployment process steps are applied to chains.Needs for door handles of both end user and the customers of the focal (producer) firm within the chain are determined. Besides, in order to catalyze the coordination and cooperation throughout the chain, the needs of the chain members which are the customers of the focal firm are found out. Maximum value tables, indicating the technical requirements to fulfill the revealed needs are established