A Primer on Probabilistic Forecasting
If you keep up with the news about supply chain analytics, you are more frequently encountering the phrase “probabilistic forecasting.” Probabilistic forecasts have the ability to simulate future values that aren’t anchored to the past. If this phrase is puzzling, read on.
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.
Six Steps Up the Learning Curve for New Planners
If you are a new professional in the field of inventory management, you face a very steep learning curve. There are many moving parts in the system you manage, and much of the movement is random. You may find it helpful to take a step back from the day-to-day flow to think about what it takes to be successful. Here are six suggestions that you may find useful; they are distilled from working over thirty five years with some very smart practitioners.
Probabilistic Forecasting for Intermittent Demand
The New Forecasting Technology derives from Probabilistic Forecasting, a statistical method that accurately forecasts both average product demand per period and customer service level inventory requirements.
Automatic Forecasting for Time Series Demand Projections
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.
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.
Forecast Using Leading Indicators – Regression Analysis:
In this Video Tutorials Dr. Thomas Willemain, co–Founder and SVP Research, presents Regression Analysis, a specialized statistical modeling technique to improve the accuracy of the forecasts. These videos explain with examples how to use Regression Analysis and the various scenarios where this technique makes a good choice.
5 Demand Planning Tips for Calculating Forecast Uncertainty
Those who produce forecasts owe it to those who consume forecasts, and to themselves, to be aware of the uncertainty in their forecasts. This note is about how to estimate forecast uncertainty and use the estimates in your demand planning process. We focus on forecasts made in support of demand planning as well as forecasts inherent in optimizing inventory policies involving reorder points, safety stocks, and min/max levels.
Forecasting Techniques for a more profitable business
Compares the most useful Forecasting Techniques: Exponential Smoothing, Single Exponential Smoothing, Holt’s Method and Winter’s Method. These videos explain the basic thinking under each technique as well as the math behind them, how they are used in practice and the tradeoff of each method.
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.
Backing into Safety Stock is the Safe Play
Safety stock is a critical component in any system of inventory management. Indeed, some inventory software treats safety stock as the key decision variable in the quest to balance inventory cost against item availability. Unfortunately, that approach is not the best way to strike the balance.
Engineering to Order at Kratos Space – Making Parts Availability a Strategic Advantage
The Kratos Space group within National Security technology innovator Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc., produces COTS s software and component products for space communications – Making Parts Availability a Strategic Advantage
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.
Gaming Out Your Logistical Response to the Corona Virus
This short note is about one way your business can develop a plan to adjust to one of the likely fallouts from the virus: sudden increases in the time it takes to get inventory replenishment from suppliers. Supply chains around the world are being disrupted. If this happens to you, how can you react in a systematic way?
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