A new AMR study that included feedback from 455 North American and European companies found that the firms that rated themselves as "demand-sensing leaders" — which means they sense channel demand in days or hours versus weeks — rate themselves 20 percent better at new product launches, thus boosting new product success rates to 60 percent. (There's a surprise.) Other interesting demand driven facts are sprinkled throughout the report, but for all of the high falutin' talk, I am curious to know why AMR would build up such a powerful case, only to break it down with this questionable closing statement:

While these results are powerful and support that DDSN is not supply chains as usual, most companies are just beginning their DDSN journey.

Just beginning the journey? This concept was created years ago. If people aren't on board now, don't you think it's time to, um, move on and spend research dollars elsewhere?

AMR's Chief Research Officer Bruce Richardson recently conducted an interview with Forbes about this very topic. He's one of the people who worked on the concept of the demand-driven supply network (DDSN) many moons ago…thirty years, to be exact. Obviously, Bruce is enamored with his work but he still fails to convince of the validity of the DDSN. Here's a few interview statements from Bruce that underscore this point:

Even in the best-run companies, the demand side is not necessarily tied to the supply side. And now we have the product side. How do we feed any new information as to demand back into product and supply so we can have a closed-loop replenishment system?

For a concept that has been around for at least three decades, I'd have to say it's still a pretty messy one, which Bruce himself admits:

…we are still missing lots of opportunities on the new product side. We do not have a fully integrated way of looking at this.

The Manufacturer also has uncovered some pretty embarrassing statements that shame the DDSN concept which they refer to as "demand stream mapping."

"I've never heard of it," said one business owner, from The Manufacturer article. "It honestly sounds like someone tried to create something new either because (a) they could sell it or (b) they didn't understand value stream mapping in the first place," said another.

Bill Schwarz of TBM Consulting is also cited in the article and believes the DDSN hasn't really taken off because manufacturers are scared to talk to their customers about change.

"Companies look at what they can control, which is themselves — their own operations — and then their contractors and suppliers," said Schwarz. "They can…make demands of their supply side. They don't have the confidence and may even be afraid to go to their customers to seek to increase their understanding, even though understanding would improve process flow."

Jamie Flinchbaugh, of the Lean Learning Center, agrees with Schwarz.

"It's generally true that there isn't enough work done on the demand side," said Flinchbaugh. "Feeding change forward to the consumer isn't easy; even in B2B relationships, which are separated from the consumer, it can be emotionally frightening to engage the customer in change."

How amiable is your company to change? Is it that the DDSN is simply too complex to adopt?