Patent ID: 8015052

Claim:
A method of generating a demand plan for a configurable product in a managed supply chain using a computer, wherein the configurable product comprises an assembled component, the method comprising: providing a processor device in the computer; accessing a characteristic value combination in a primary profile planning table for the configurable product using the processor device, wherein the characteristic value combination describes geographical aspects, customer aspects, or product aspects of materials distributed in the supply chain; accessing a characteristic value combination in a secondary profile planning table using the processor device for an assembled component of the configurable product including a header characteristic, the primary profile planning table and the secondary profile planning table being assigned a characteristic value combination that identifies the sequence in which the primary profile planning table and the secondary profile planning table will be processed by the processor device; processing the at least one of the characteristic value combinations in the primary profile planning table and the secondary profile planning table using the processor device to generate transactional data as the demand plan taking into account the assembled component; and controlling the supply of the configurable product in accordance with the demand plan.