The impact of forecasting on operational performance: Mediation effects through flexibility enablers

Literature has devoted increasing attention to the problem of supply and demand management in uncertain contexts. Only limited contributions, however, can be found regarding the interaction between forecasting and flexibility enablers to manage demand as well as regarding the flexibility enablers' effect on company performance. We will discuss the impacts of flexibility and forecasting on dynamic interactions. The aim of this work is to study the mediation effect of forecasting through flexibility enablers on company performance, i. e., customer satisfaction and cost efficiency. Our results provide evidence that the relationship between forecasting and customer satisfaction is mainly due to process flow management, while the relationship with cost efficiency is mainly due to layout. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.