Last week I had the pleasure of attending (with six of my SAS colleagues) the IBF's Best Practices Forecasting Conference in Orlando. Some of the highlights:

• Charlie Chase and I were interviewed by Russell Goodman of SupplyChainBrain.com. The videos will be posted on SCB's website later this year. Meantime, enjoy a few of our interviews from the past:
  • Lean Approaches to Forecasting
  • Evaluating Forecasting Performance
  • Advances in New Product Forecasting
  • Sensing and Shaping: New Ideas in Demand Planning
• The IBF Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Sara Brumbaugh, Managing of Principal at Ceres Analytics.
• Jeff Marthins, Director of Supply Chain Operations at Tasty Baking Company, received IBF's Award for Excellence in Forecasting and Planning. Here is Jeff during his interview with SupplyChainBrain (looking just like Glenn Beck without a face full of tears).
• Sara Park, Group Director of S&OP at Coca Cola, delivered the keynote.

In addition to the SCB interviews, Charlie and I hosted roundtable discussions, and delivered regular sessions (mine co-presented with Erin Marchant of Moen).

• The "worst practices" roundtable had participants confessing their forecasting sins -- or at least reporting ones committed by "friends" or colleagues.

Erin Marchant did a fabulous job at our "Applying Forecast Value Added at Moen" presentation. While they are still early in their FVA efforts, she shared some extremely valuable insights from Moen's journey:

• FVA analysis takes the emotion out of forecast discussions
  • Data now supports the conversation about how to improve the process
• Sometimes you can't do better than the naive forecast
  • FVA helps you focus your forecast improvement efforts in the right places
• FVA is a measure of your forecast process
  • NOT an "us vs. them" proposition
  • NOT a catapult to throw others "under the bus"
  • NOT an excuse to create the sales forecast in a silo
• FVA starts a conversation that improves your forecasting process!

Erin also noted that because of FVA:

• We are able to better pinpoint the causes of forecast error and start dialogues about those parts of our process.
• We are able to begin conversations about our supply chain structure that could lead to more accurate demand signals and better service for our customers.

Learn more in Erin's prior interview on the IBF blog, and in her forthcoming SupplyChainBrain interview.

Special Thanks

Thanks to Eric Wilson of Tempur Sealy and the folks at Arkieva, who contributed the Tempur-Cloud® Breeze Dual Cooling Pillow that I won in the raffle at Eric's session.

My long-term forecast is for good sleeping.

And as always, IBF's Director of Strategic Relationships, Partnerships, Memberships, & Events, Stephanie Murray gave SAS the royal treatment. For me personally, this included a stash of M&Ms (brown ones removed per contract), and mini-Tobasco sauce with every meal.

Stephanie's energy and behind-the-scenes organization are a huge (and under-appreciated) part of the success of these events.