1. A method of planning demand for a configurable product having at least one product dependent characteristic and one product independent characteristic in a managed supply chain, comprising the steps of: providing a data storage system to store data with respect to a plurality of product independent characteristics and product dependent characteristics; receiving a selection of at least one product to be represented; receiving a selection of a particular characteristic to be represented; receiving a planning parameter with respect to the selection of a particular characteristic or product; loading data from the data storage system into a buffer; performing a calculation on the data with respect to the product dependent characteristics and the product independent characteristics; modelling a hierarchy of the represented data, wherein the hierarchy is defined in accordance with the planning parameter; and using the hierarchy to administer the buffered data.