The Foresight Practitioner Conference returns to Raleigh, NC (November 15-16), with a theme of "Recoupling Forecasting with Inventory Control and Supply Planning." This event is produced jointly by Foresight and the North Carolina State University Institute for Advanced Analytics, and deals with an important topic. Too often we consider forecasting
Experience design is not just like a standard advertising campaign or an online app, but rather a strategy to keep customers engaged with a brand through impactful interactions. It means that every product and service is designed to offer a delightful experience; the packaging, mobile app, web and print ads
Fresh from chairing the Foresight Practitioner Conference on “Worst Practices in Business Forecasting,” hosted two weeks ago at the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, Foresight editor-in-chief Len Tashman previews the Fall 2016 issue. Preview of the Fall 2016 issue of Foresight In the provocative article, “The
Companies launch initiatives to upgrade or improve their sales & operations planning and demand planning processes all the time, but many fail to deliver the results they should. Has your forecasting operation fallen short of expectations? Do you struggle with "best practices" that seem incapable of producing accurate, useful results?
Multi-echelon inventory optimization is ever more a requirement in this era of globalization, which is both a boon and bane for manufacturing companies. Optimizing pricing is also important. Global reach allows these companies to expand to new territories but at the same time increases the competition on their home turf.
Editor Len Tashman's Preview of the Summer Issue of Foresight Clarity and effectiveness of communication are key to success – so says a recent survey by the National Association of Business Economists (NABE), which reported that industry leaders and hiring managers considered communication skills to be the single most important
SAS® Insights is a section of the sas.com website devoted to being "your top source for analytics news and views." It contains articles, interviews, research reports, and other content from both SAS and non-SAS contributors. In a new article posted this week, we added three short videos containing practical advice
The digital revolution has affected all aspects of business, including supply chains. The Internet of Things (IoT), with its network of devices embedded with sensors is now connecting the consumer to the factory. Technologies such as RFID, GPS, event stream processing (ESP) and analytics are combining to help companies to transform their existing
Over the course of my career as industrial engineer turned supply chain planning advocate I've had the opportunity to work hands-on with many manufacturing and supply chain planning solutions. This has included solutions offered commercially by the usual suspects of ERP and post-SCM consolidation supply chain solution providers. Most of these
In conjunction with the International Institute of Forecasters and the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, the 2016 Foresight Practitioner conference will be held in Raleigh, NC (October 5-6, 2016) with the theme of: Worst Practices in Forecasting: Today's Mistakes to Tomorrow's Breakthroughs This is the first
Journal of Business Forecasting columnist Larry Lapide is a longtime favorite of mine. As an industry analyst at AMR, and more recently as an MIT Research Affiliate, Larry's quarterly column is a perpetual source of guidance for the practicing business forecaster. No wonder he received IBF's 2012 Lifetime Achievement in
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
Editor Len Tashman's Preview of the Fall 2015 issue of Foresight This 39th issue of Foresight features a special section on forecasting support systems (FSS) developed by our FSS Editor Fotios Petropoulos. His article Forecasting Support Systems: Ways Forward highlights three main areas for improvement: better utilization of open-source software
In a recent meeting, the CIO of a leading commercial automotive company’s shared his experience of high complexity in managing forecasting data. I was not surprised. Often demand planners complain about managing forecasting data. I can relate to where there are coming from. It’s due to the approach prescribed by their legacy
You may not be in London on October 7 to take advantage of the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting's free workshop on promotional forecasting. However, there are still plenty of forecasting educational opportunities coming up this fall: SAS Business Knowledge Series Best Practices in Demand-Driven Forecasting (Chicago, September 24-25) My colleague
Profitable growth is at the forefront of manufacturing executives’ minds¹. The math is simple: increase revenue and decrease costs. Easy, right? Unfortunately, getting there isn't that simple. The good news is that analytics can help. The better news is that there’s a new place for manufacturers to discover analytic best
I was recently asked by a customer if they should move the responsibility for creating the statistical baseline forecast. They were considering moving it from their regional country offices to their global headquarters. In addtion, they were considering changing the role of their regional demand planners to only make adjustments to
JBF Special Issue on Predictive Business Analytics Dr. Chaman Jain, professor at St. Johns University, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Business Forecasting, provides his preview of the Winter 2014-15 issue: Predictive Business Analytics, the practice of extracting information from existing data to determine patterns, relationships and future outcomes, is
Downstream data have been electronically available on a weekly basis since the late 1980s. But most companies have been slow to adopt downstream data for planning and forecasting purposes. Let's look at why that is. Downstream data is data that originates downstream on the demand side of the value chain. Examples
♦We learned this week that SAS is ranked #4 on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2015. This makes six straight years ranking in the top four (including twice at #1). ♦The March/April 2015 issue of Analytics Magazine includes a SAS company profile by my colleague Kathy Lange. As
Calling All Forecasters Have you tried Forecast Value Added analysis? What did you find out? Are you willing to share your learnings (at least those that can be revealed publicly)?Would you like to be featured in a new blog series on FVA, published by the Institute of Business Forecasting? The IBF was
We're entering the busy season for forecasting events, and here is the current calendar: Analytics2014 - Frankfurt The European edition of Analytics2014 kicks off tomorrow in Frankfurt, Germany. Five hundred of the leading thinkers and doers in the analytics profession hook up for two full days of interaction and learning.
Analytics gives us not just the ability but the imperative to separate our planning activities into two distinct segments – detailed planning that leads to budgets in support of execution, and high-level, analytic-enabled business/scenario planning. My critique of Control Towers in this blog last time led me not only to
SAS/Foresight Webinar Series On Thursday February 20, 11am ET, join Martin Joseph, Managing Owner of Rivershill Consultancy for this quarter's installment of the SAS/Foresight Webinar Series. Martin will be presenting "The Forecasting Mantra" -- a template that identifies the elements required to achieve sustained, world-class forecasting and planning excellence. He'll also
Where is global warming when you need it? Throughout much of the southeast, life has been at a standstill since midday yesterday, when 2" of snow and 20oF temperatures brought civilization to its knees. If your life, or at least your forecasting career, is at a similar standstill, make plans to
The war of business forecasting ideas is being waged in the trenches of the online discussion groups. Where else can great disagreement be exacerbated (and sometimes even resolved) by often civilized discussion, with participants from across the globe? One of the popular groups for business forecasting practitioners is Demand Planning, Sales Forecasting,
The Lancaster Centre for Forecasting is led by two of my favorites in the forecasting world, Robert Fildes and Sven Crone. The Centre is home to cutting edge research and consulting, covering the range of forecasting models and methods, as well as real-world forecasting process. The Centre has announced a
The Perils Revisited A few posts ago I warned of the perils of forecasting benchmarks, and why they should not be used to set your forecasting performance objectives: Can you trust the data? Is measurement consistent across the respondents? Is the comparison relevant? In addition to a general suspicion about
The April 2012 issue of ORMS Today contains a piece on "How analytics enhance the guest experience at Walt Disney World," by Pete Buczkowski and Hai Chu. While many of us are used to forecasting just one or two things (such as unit sales or revenue), Pete and Hai illustrate
Being a Hollywood celebrity means plenty of perks in addition to willing groupies. For example, the 2012 Oscars Nominee Gift Bag (valued at over $62,000) included a 5-day elephant safari in Botswana ($15,580), Eminence organic body scrub (with virgin coconut oil and raw sugar cane, $48), Naughty Bits Brownies ($50), and a
