Patent Document ID: 20120053989
Application ID: 12869300
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method for delivering products according to propagated changes in a demand planning hierarchy that includes a plurality of nodes tracked by a data structure, the demand planning hierarchy containing expected demands for a plurality of products at a first level and aggregations of expected demands for multiple products at a second level, the method comprising: receiving demand planning data and associating the demand planning data with a data structure, wherein the data structure tracks: a product quantity at a node, a one-to-one relationship between the node and a parent node, a one-to-many relationship between the node and children nodes, and a disaggregation factor that identifies how the product quantity at the node is divided among children nodes of the node, wherein a relieving flow and an augmenting flow are associated with the node; receiving a change to the product quantity at the node or the disaggregation factor at the node and updating the data structure for the node based upon the received change; updating the product quantity at other nodes in the demand planning hierarchy based upon the update to the data structure based on the received change, wherein said updating the product quantity at other nodes in the demand planning hierarchy includes: solving a set of simultaneous equations to generate an updated demand planning hierarchy, wherein the simultaneous equations include: a sum of the product quantity at the node and the augmenting flow at the node equals a sum of product quantities of children nodes of the node and the relieving flow at the node; and implementation of the disaggregation factor of the node and other nodes; wherein solving the set of simultaneous equations includes using an optimization technique where the sum of the augmenting flows and the relieving flows of the node and other nodes is minimized; wherein one or more products are delivered according to the updated demand planning hierarchy.