iSixSigma

Looking for Help with Demand Forecasting

Six Sigma – iSixSigma › Forums › General Forums › Methodology › Looking for Help with Demand Forecasting

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • December 3, 2019 at 6:19 am #244137

    Ikrame Mahrou
    Participant

    Good afternoon all!

    Greetings! We are a group of students who recently chose to specialize in Lean/Six Sigma. For us to complete our course we are required to work on a project which is the following:

    We have to come up with a demand -forecasting model + re-order point for a company. The demand -forecasting model is for three main products. The data we have received are sales numbers of 2016-2017-2018 accompanied with purchase number and of course the Sales price and purchase price.

    We have recently bought minitab to use it for the model and re-order point but we have no idea what variable we need or how we can do it. Unfortunately our teacher isn’t really knowledgeable in forecasting methods.
    We could really use some help/guidance perhaps any of you could either help us out or steer us into the right direction.

    Thank you very much in advance!

    0
    December 3, 2019 at 10:15 am #244140

    Robert Butler
    ★★★★★★★★★★
    Participant

    I think you will need to provide more information before anyone can offer much in the way of suggestions.

    1. You said, “The data we have received are sales numbers of 2016-2017-2018 accompanied with purchase number and of course the Sales price and purchase price.”

    2. You also said, “We have to come up with a demand -forecasting model + re-order point for a company.”

    Question: What is the level of detail of the sales numbers?  Monthly/weekly summaries? Actual sale-by-sale reporting for each of the three items and the day they were sold? Or…something else?

    Question: What is the criteria for the need to re-order? X number of items 1,2,3 in non-working inventory, JIT delivery with a known lag time for meeting JIT requirements? Or…something else?

    Question: Regardless of the level of detail, since it is time series data have you plotted the data against time?  If not, why not? If you have, what did you see?  Demand cycling? Steady state sales? etc.

    If you can provide answers to these questions perhaps I or someone else might be able to offer some advice.

     

    0
    December 4, 2019 at 10:08 pm #244274

    Strayer
    ★★★★★★★★★★
    Participant

    I think this is a poor choice for a six sigma training project.   I suppose that your instructor has his/her reasons, maybe that this is something management wants to address, so you’ll have to live with it.  If, as you say, your teacher isn’t really knowledgeable about forecasting methods, that’s a real bummer.  I’d advise you to look up information on Six Sigma for Demand Forecasting.  There’s some pretty good stuff there that you might find helpful.

    0
  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.