The Smart Forecaster

Pursuing best practices in demand planning,

forecasting and inventory optimization

Improve Forecast Accuracy, Eliminate Excess Inventory, & Maximize Service Levels

In this video tutorial Dr. Thomas Willemain, co–Founder and SVP Research at Smart Software, presents Automatic Forecasting for Time Series Demand Projections, a specialized algorithmic tournament to determine an appropriate time series model and estimate the parameters to compute the best forecasts methods. Automatic forecasts of large numbers of time series are frequently used in business, some have trend either up or down, and some have seasonality so they are cyclic, and each of those specific patterns requires a suitable technical approach, and an appropriate statistical forecasting method. Tom explains how the tournament computes the best forecasts methods and works through a practical example.

Four Ways to Optimize Inventory

Inventory optimization has become an even higher priority in recent months for many of our customers. Some are finding their products in vastly greater demand; more have the opposite problem. In either case, events like the Covid19 pandemic are forcing a reexamination of standard operating conditions, such as choices of reorder points and order quantities.

TOP 3 COMMON INVENTORY POLICIES

In this Video Dr. Thomas Willemain, co–Founder and SVP Research, defines and compares the three most used inventory control policies. These policies are divided into two groups, periodic review and continuous review. There is also a fourth policy called MRP logic or forecast based inventory planning which is the subject of a separate video blog that you can see here. These videos explain each policy, how they are used in practice and the pros and cons of each approach.

Share, develop, and manage consensus demand plans

Ensure inventory policy matches business strategy. Various team members can create their own scenarios, perhaps dividing the work by product line or sales territory. One decision maker can then merge these scenarios into a consensus plan.