At a conference this past June, I ran into Alan Milliken who works at chemical giant BASF and who is a frequent presenter at Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning (IBF) events. He was saying that the hottest topic in demand planning—especially during these difficult economic times—is what he termed the Volume-Variance Analysis (VVA) demand planning strategy. It may be that he came from a chemical industry event where several presenters talked about how they were using it to better plan product supply. He stated that one chemical company just successfully implemented a demand planning system. The first attempt at implementation failed because the VVA strategy was not enabled. He strongly believes that more demand planners should start using it, that the IBF should have more training sessions on it, and that software companies should imbed the concept into their demand planning software packages. I committed to do my part in espousing its virtues by dedicating this Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF) column to VVA. Alan will be discussing it in depth during his talk at the Supply Chain Planning and Forecasting: Best Practices Conference taking place in Orlando from October 12th to 14th.