Demand Forecasting

1. Why would demand forecasting make sense in a “make to stock” situation? It projects the standard components needed so that the product can be made after customer receiving a customer order.

However, forecast errors will also lead to unhappy customers, lost sales, and excessive inventory. To minimize errors, retailers should find the right demand forecast. Retailers do not want to have a lot of inventory sitting in the back room and too little inventory that will cause out of stock. Holding huge inventory will cause a retailer to have more expenses and decrease their profit if item is not sold especially if the product is innovative type like electronics. The challenge is to balance the inventory with demand. Communication and contribution from people in functional area is also important to create better information and improve overall accuracy. At this time, customer satisfaction will start to decrease. For example, MPRNews says one of Target loyal customer, Ann Hendricks, she is disappointed with target store in St.Paul. “Too many times, she says that store is out of the milk, coffee, bread, pasta and other staples she wants. At Target, sometimes the whole section of cheeses is blank. There's nothing in there” (Moylan). A loyal customer like Ann Hendricks goes to the Lunds & Byerlys store in downtown St. Paul to buy her grocery

Forecasting should include the use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to forecast demand for its products.

The current demand forecasting method is based on qualitative techniques more than quantitative ones. If the forecast is not accurate, the company would carry both inventory and stock out costs. It might lose customers due to shortage of supply or carry additional holding costs due to excess production. If the actual demand doesn’t match the forecast ones, and the forecast was too high, this will result in high inventories, obsolescence, asset disposals, and increased carrying costs. When a forecast is too low, the customer resorts to a competitive product or retailer. A supplier could lose both sales and shelf space at that retail location forever if their predictions continue to be inaccurate. The tolerance level of the average consumer

* Customer demand: Rather than basing on history and forecast sale of its products, the company should pay more attention in analyzing some uncontrollable factors such as inflation, recession, and currency exchange rate which may affect customers’ buying behavior.

* Forecasting is an impartial strategic ingredient that will ensure apt base for reputable planning. Our forecast is always the first step in developing plans in running the business along with our future plans of growth strategies. With this tool, we are able to anticipate our sales within reason that then can allow for us to control our costs in conjunction with inventory which will then help us to enhance our customer service. Sales forecasting is a vital strategic tactic in our company’s methodology.

We first predict the annual demand for the year 1972 based on trend for 4 months of 1972 based on corresponding months of 1971.

We first predict the annual demand for the year 1972 based on trend for 4 months of 1972 based on corresponding months of 1971.

But even this is not possible in case of a new product or innovation. A forecast of sales, demand, cash, requirements and several such business valuables are extremely essential for a business in order to be able to appropriately plan and conduct its operations in an effective and efficient manner. Yet, forecasts cannot be made accurately as there are several factors and changes in the current environment that leads to variations in forecasts and impacts or causes a manager to make changes in the forecasts.

1.Detail and discuss alt the challenges you faced in projecting demand: meeting customer needs and wants, pricing, competitive actions and competitive response. How did your decisions impact your end performance (market share, income statement)?

Aggregate demand forecasting is used by the company because the business is centered around the custom printing of the

Before, the concept of demand forecast was to serve the key functional groups in achieving their own interest. Facing the new challenges, forecast needed to be more accurate. And therefore it needed a new concept that is to have a consensus forecasting that would accurately reveal market demand and align the needs of key actors in the forecasting process. Leitax implemented two specific changes in forecasting process. The first one is to switch the focus from sell-in to sell-through and second one is to ignore capacity constraints.

A set of graphs shows the relationship between demand and total revenue (TR) for a linear demand curve. As price decreases in the elastic range, TR increases, but in the inelastic range, TR decreases. TR is maximized at the quantity where PED = 1.

* Here you should include a simple table showing the years and the total sales for each year, along with a brief explanation of why sales are expected to rise, fall, change, or stay the same in certain years. Provide a brief explanation of the sales forecast, indicating why you expect sales to rise or fall during the planning horizon. Your explanation should be consistent with the trends and changes in sales found in your table:

The concept of demand forecasting more accurately measures and predicts the changes and opportunities in the supply chain.