Operations Management / Forecasting

Operations Management / Forecasting

1. Concept

   • Forecasting is a process of making predictions about the future course of a business or a company based on trend analysis and past and present data
     • Also the use of scientific techniques and methods
   • Features / characteristics
     • Forecasting is strictly concerned with future events only
     • It analysis the probability of a future event or transaction occurring or happening
     • It involves analysis of data from the past and the present
     • Forecasting uses scientific techniques and methods to make such forecasts
     • But it also involves certain guesswork and observations

2. Uses of Foprecasts

   • Accounting
     • Cost / profit estimates
   • Finance
     • Cash flow and funding
   • Human Resources
     • Hiring / recruiting / training
   • Marketing
     • Pricing, promotions, strategy
   • MIS
     • IT / IS systems, services
   • Operations
     • Schedules, MRP, workloads

3. The basic steps in a forecasting task

   • Step 1: Determine purpose of forecasts
   • Step 2: Establish a time horizont
   • Step 3: Select a forecasting technique
   • Step 5: Prepare the forecast
   • Step 6: Monitor the forecast

4. Forecasting Methods

   • Qualitative
     • These methods are not purely guesswork—there are well-developed structured approaches to obtaining good forecasts without using historical data.
     • Delphi technique
     • Sales force polling
     • Executive opinions
     • Consumer surveys
   • Quantitive
     • can be applied when two conditions are satisfied: numerical information about the past is available; it is reasonable to assume that some aspects of the past patterns will continue into the future.
     • Moving average
     • Naive methods
     • Exponential smoothing
     • Trend analysis
     • Decomposition of time series

5. Aplications

   • Supply chain management
   • Economic forecasting
   • Earthquake prediction
   • Land use forecasting
   • Player and team performance in sports
   • Sales forecasting
   • Telecommunications forecasting

Bilder und Dateien der Mindmap