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Poole College of Management 
Supply Chain Resource Cooperative

Summary: Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR): A Tutorial

January 31, 2011

Summary

  • CPFR has its roots in Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), but goes further by formalizing the planning, sales and order forecasting, and exception handling activities.
  • The CPFR process model consists of 4 major processes:
    • Strategy and planning
    • Demand and supply management
    • Execution
    • Analysis
  • The 4 major processes are further subdivided into 8 collaboration tasks.
  • Each collaboration task has corresponding enterprise tasks, most of which retailers and manufacturers are already doing. CPFR provides the framework for coordinating these efforts.
  • To implement CPFR, many manufacturers use cross-functional customer teams, while many retailers use cross-functional category teams. Such teams have the benefit of simplifying both inter-firm and intra-firm coordination.