Forecasting “Best Practices”
“Effective demand planning and sales forecasting across the supply chain can bring a host of benefits. Specifically, it can help improve labor productivity, reduce head count, cut inventories, and speed up production flows, and increase revenues and profits.
-Edward J. Marien
To find the “best practices” for forecasting, our team researched many cases of forecasting success, and found five companies with a common theme. Rayovac, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company, AAi. FosterGrant, the Sara Lee Corporation, and the Scotts Company all had major problems with forecasting, some of them very similar. To address and solve these problems each of these companies made major improvements to their forecasting systems. Although some used similar methods and others very different, these companies found that the right people, process and information technology was the key to efficient and accurate forecasting.
Rayovac
Rayovac discovered the proper use of forecasting when it implemented its consensus decision-making teams to improve their performance. They believe that the best information comes directly from the customer. Therefore, their forecasting takes place from the bottom-up. Sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain builds a consensus for forecasting, inventory management, scheduling, warehousing, and transportation. Their consensus forecasting is the responsibility of a cross-functional team.
For their annual planning process, a bottom-up and a top-down forecasting procedure is used. The top Key Results Measures (KRMs) are compared with the bottom-up forecast which is developed by the consensus teams. Meetings are held to align the two when there are discrepancies. Monthly meetings are held to update the bottom-up forecast and actions are taken to bring the forecast and annual plan into alignment.
Rayovac has discovered some key guidelines to be used for successful forecasting and planning:
1. Actually using the forecast to drive the business and not...
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...orecasting cannot be understated. Many companies have found that after successful forecasting and proper use of people, process, and technology have led to increased performance of the company as a whole. This has been proven in our analysis of the current best practices of forecasting in the workplace.
References
1. Bowman, Robert J. “Scotts Cultivates a Customer Centric Supply Chain Strategy.” Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies, July 2004.
2. Hoffman, Kurt C. “Who’s That Behind FosterGrant’s Demand.” Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies, December 2003.
3. Marien, Edward J. Demand Planning and Sales Forecasting: A Supply Chain Essential. Supply Chain Management Review, 1999
4. Murphy, Jean V. “More Accurate Forecasts Give Sales, Operations Planning New Life at Sara Lee Unit.” Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies, March 2003.
5. Murphy, Jean V. “Special Issue: Collaborative Commerce Forecasting Tool Lowers Coke Bottler’s Inventory.” Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies, November 2002.
Athens was a much more superior polis compared to Sparta because the Athenians invented new ideas and creations that supported the people, such as democracy, the Athenians led the Delian League, and Sparta created the Peloponnesian League after the Athenians created their alliance, and the Athenians changed the ways of their government many times to suit the people, and the Spartans did not.
Burns Corporation is an auto corporation that consists of 24 dealerships selling foreign automobiles in the United States. Burns has experienced an increase in their inventory, which is becoming costly and cutting into profits. Inventory costs total approximately 300 million dollars with a 3% finance charge. Recently, however, inventory costs have peaked at 360 million dollars and finance charges have reached approximately 750 thousand dollars monthly. As inventory grows due to misalignment of sales and merchandise ordering, so does the need for more accurate forecasting models. The manufactures have issued a "turn and earn" approach that affects how dealerships will be receiving their inventory. This change states that shipments will be based on inventory. The only way new models will be received is when other models are sold. Burns needs an analysis model that will assist them in future inventory decisions. The development of this model and what is should entail seems to be the main priority.
In the novel, fire might signify the risk of knowledge and accessibility, and the demolition that might affect others as well. In the story, Victor takes over God’s Prometheus by stealing the gift of creation from God which was proscribed; therefore, he is punished by losing his family, friend, and his happiness (Gilbreth). Because, Victor pretends like Prometheus and tries to put himself in God’s position and then he constructs a life creature from parts of human corpses and allows him exist in the world; therefore, he is chastised by God for the blunders he made. In this instance, the fire in the novel might reveal what devastation Frankenstein is cause by fooling around the God’s tasks and altering the nature or human evolution of life. Further, in the story the monster said, “I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage… I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues. (Shelley 149). The
Relationships serve as the communication channels that bond family members together. Attachment theory presents a way of recognizing and assessing the quality of relationships between family members (Landers et al, 2013). John Bowlby (1988) established attachment theory through the study of mammals and humans. He proposed that infants develop their initial relationship with their mother but not always. In addition, he suggested that this relationship serves as the foundation for all subsequent relationships throughout life. This initial relationship creates a subsystem within the family system. The mother’s responsiveness to the infant establishes the quality of attachment the infant will develop (Landers et al, 2013). In most cases, when an infant experiences their mother or primary caretaker as nurturing and responsive, the infant will develop a secure attachment. However, when the infant experiences a primary caretaker as unresponsive or inattentive, an insecure
Target Corporation needs to increase product availability based on the customer needs using a forecasting and supply chain
Key success factors in this industry include on time delivery, quality product, and brand recognition. Supermarkets and restaurants cannot afford to have shelves sit empty for even a moment. For a company in this industry to succeed it must have a model that allows for on time delivery. This must combated by the cost of keeping inventory levels to high, and the risk of wasting inventory that is no longer fresh enough to be sold. Forecasting product demand is critical for any company in this industry to have enough inventories to supply, without creating profit eating w...
One of those traits is that although Athenian citizens and soldiers live a more leisurely life and are not trained as rigorously as the Spartans in land warfare, Athenians’ natural courage makes up for that (Thucydides pg. 42). Athens was definitely the dominant naval power in Greece at the time, but the Athenians’ devaluing of land warfare led to a stalemate in the first phase of the Peloponnesian War before the Peace of Nicias in which Sparta ravaged Athens’ countryside and forced its citizens to be holed up in the city walls and to live in close quarters, making them susceptible to the plague. Another trait of Athens that can be argued as not a positive factor is its institution of democracy. Athenian democracy was quite limited in the modern sense since its citizenry only included ethnic Athenian males over the age of 20, but it was remarkable in the ancient world for the amount of civic participation it allowed of those that it considered citizens. The Athenians prided themselves on including people of lower economic status into the citizenry, but this trait may be not as positive as Pericles proclaimed (Thucydides pg. 40). In an oligarchic system such as Sparta’s, if the city-state was to win a war, it
In this case, Heineken long lead-time from order to delivery prohibits the company from being flexible and adapting quickly to market demand fluctuation. Therefore the implementation of an innovative Internet system called HOPS, would improve its supply chain performance by reducing the lead-time from order to delivery. In 1996, distributors and sales representatives had to plan out orders three months ahead of delivery, it was daunting task for them to predict the factors that would affect the product sales such as weather, special promotions, and local demand fluctuations in advance.
The Peloponnesian War was between the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta due to the growing tensions that continued to grow between the two cities that eventually came to a breaking point. The Peloponnesian War, which can be divided into three phases known as: The Archidamian War, The Sicilian Expedition and The Decelean War, is one of the greatest event in Greek history and an analysis of the causes and effects of this war will give us a better understanding for how the cities of Athens and Sparta came to war and the impact it left behind.
Bower, P. (2005). 12 MOST COMMON THREATS TO SALES AND OPERATIONS PLANNING PROCESS. Journal Of Business Forecasting, 24(3), 4-14
Accommodating customer requirements in most supply chain arrangement requires a forecast to drive the process. (book page 133) When looking into the definition of forecasting which is projecting what is going to be sold (units, seats, rooms etc) it is also important to take into consideration where and when in order to reach the future goals. (book page 133) Since it is argued that effective supply chain and logistical capacity is an important competitive advantage. (Christopher 2005) Where maximizing the revenue is the key element in hospitality sector and for hotel industry there is an increased attention on effective demand management and forecasting for reservation systems. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207002000110)
Therefore, gender brings is the action through which what it names is brought into being; masculinity or feminism. It is the language that constitutes and construct gender identities meaning gender comes after language. The extent to which a person performs the gender determine how much real a gender is. An outside gendered self or a self-preceding isn’t there; gender identity is not necessarily constructed by “I “or “we”. Social conventions enactments which is due to our retrospective reality results in subjectivity characterised by self-willingness and independence as contended by Butler. From this we learn the prerogative nature of gender identity, is determined by the situation in which one is in like society, contact etc. therefore certain social positions can potentially produce a privileged
Forecasting can be classified into qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative techniques are subjective or judgmental and are based on estimates and opinions. The Delphi technique, a common form of qualitative forecasting, allows experts to create an effective forecast under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Time?s series forecasting, a quantitative technique, uses a statistical analysis of past sales in order to effectively predict future outcomes, but can be limited under conditions of uncertainty (Chase, 2003, p.364).
Addressing the trials of operating in a continually changing environment and realizing forecasts can only
...om product forecasting exercise, this will help customers in getting a better deal from suppliers (Mellahi, K., Johnson, M., 2000).