A demand fulfillment system and method to provide current supply and demand to generate a work schedule and a material delivery schedule for manufacturing items, particularly commodities, built to customer order. The demand fulfillment system and method uses outstanding customer orders for items as an accurate measure of current demand, and a current state of an available inventory of material for producing the items as an accurate measure of current supply. Customer orders are considered a source of demand from the time the customer order is received until the customer order is fulfilled. Material available to the factory is considered to be part of supply regardless of location of the material. A work schedule and a material delivery schedule are generated periodically using the current state of the available inventory and outstanding customer orders to keep up with consumption of materials and fulfillment of customer orders.