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.

Maximize Machine Uptime with Probabilistic Modeling

If you both make and sell things, you own two inventory problems. Companies that sell things must focus relentlessly on having enough product inventory to meet customer demand. Manufacturers and asset intensive industries such as power generation, public transportation, mining, and refining, have an additional inventory concern: having enough spare parts to keep their machines running.
This technical brief reviews the basics of two probabilistic models of machine breakdown. It also relates machine uptime to the adequacy of spare parts inventory.

Want to Optimize Inventory? Follow These 4 Steps

Service Level Driven Planning (SLDP) is an approach to inventory planning based on exposing the tradeoffs between SKU availability and inventory cost that are at the root of all wise inventory decisions. When organizations understand these tradeoffs, they can make better decisions and have greater variability into the risk of stockouts. SLDP unfolds in four steps: Benchmark, Collaborate, Plan, and Track.

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.