> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.spherecast.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Demand

> Total expected consumption of the product in the period

## What it tells you

Demand is the total expected **consumption** of the product in each period — everything you expect to draw down that product to satisfy. It appears as a row for each product on the [Supply planning](/guide/supply-planning/overview) grid, one value per time bucket.

For a warehouse, demand splits into two parts:

* **Forecast demand** — demand coming from your sales or channel forecast (what customers are expected to buy).
* **Production demand** — the product consumed by manufacturing, when it is a component in a bill of materials (BOM, the recipe of parts that go into a finished product).

A finished good typically has only forecast demand, while a raw material or component may have production demand from the items it feeds.

## How to read it

Expand a Demand cell to see the detail behind the total: demand broken out **per channel** (which sales channels are driving it) and **per production line** (which manufacturing lines are consuming it). This helps you trace a spike or dip back to its source.

When a **scenario** is active, a Demand cell becomes an **editable input**. You can type a different value to test a what-if change, and there is also a bulk adjustment that applies a percentage change across future periods at once — useful for modeling a promotion, a lost customer, or a market shift without touching your base plan.

## What to do about it

Demand is mostly a signal to read rather than an action row, but it drives everything downstream: your coverage, your [Supply](/supply) recommendations, and your shortages. When you are running a scenario, edit Demand to see how the plan responds before committing to a change.

## Example

A component shows total Demand of 5,000 for the period. Expanding it reveals 3,000 as **Forecast demand** from sales channels and 2,000 as **Production demand** from a finished good that uses this component. In an active scenario, you raise the forecast portion by 10% across the next several periods to model a promotion and watch how supply needs shift.

> **Note:** In an exported file, this column may be labeled **"consumption"** — it is the same thing. See [Supply](/supply) for the inbound side, [Raw-material planning](/guide/supply-planning/raw-material-planning) for how production demand flows through BOMs, and [Scenarios](/guide/scenarios/overview) for editable what-if planning.