To support the manufacture of desktop computers for their customers, Dell needs to order all the parts that go into the computer, such as hard drives, motherboards, and memory modules. Obviously the demand for these items is driven by the production schedule for the computers. What is the term used to describe demand for these parts?

In order to support the manufacture of desktop computers for their customers, Dell needs to order all the parts that go into the computer, such as hard drives, motherboards, and memory modules.

Hence, the term used to describe demand for these parts is dependent demand.

A dependent demand can be defined as the situation whereby the demand for a specific product or item occurs as a result of the demand for another product or item. The two products are known as the lower level or child item and the higher level or parent items.

This simply means that, the components that goes into a computer are the lower level or child items while the computer itself is the higher level or parent item.