Michael Gilliland is a longtime business forecasting practitioner and formerly a Product Marketing Manager for SAS Forecasting. He is on the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Forecasters, and is Associate Editor of their practitioner journal Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Mike is author of The Business Forecasting Deal (Wiley, 2010) and former editor of the free e-book Forecasting with SAS: Special Collection (SAS Press, 2020). He is principal editor of Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and Solutions (Wiley, 2015) and Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Wiley, 2021). In 2017 Mike received the Institute of Business Forecasting's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2021 his paper "FVA: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices" was inducted into the Foresight Hall of Fame. Mike initiated The Business Forecasting Deal blog in 2009 to help expose the seamy underbelly of forecasting practice, and to provide practical solutions to its most vexing problems.
Last week I had the pleasure of delivering a one hour web lecture for the American Statistical Association on "Why Are Forecasts So Wrong? What Management Must Know About Forecasting." I find it helpful (both for myself and the audience) to follow up with written responses to all questions submitted
Forenote: We Are The Champions In a season marred by more cheating and dirty play than a church league, I had the pleasure of teaming with this motley group below to win the 2018 SAS Basketball Championship. Easy everyone...don't think I announce this to be glorified and put on a
Note: The following concludes an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. Good forecasts don’t always ‘look right’ Many forecasters believe that they can tell how good a forecast is by ‘eyeballing’ it. Good forecasts just ‘look right’ or so they would
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. The measurement challenge So here is the forecasters dilemma: There will always have forecast error. The challenge is to work out the cause of the error and to take the appropriate
We'll take a short break from the Steve Morlidge book serialization, to announce that SAS Research & Development has again provided $10,000 in funding for the SAS/IIF grant program. Both academics and industry practitioners are encouraged to apply and conduct original research for improving the practice of forecasting. SAS/IIF Grants
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. The forecasting challenge It is not possible to forecast any future outcomes precisely. Only the signal is potentially forecastable – noise is unforecastable in principle. And all forecasts assume that the
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. Data Series are different – and it matters to forecasters The nature of demand that is to be forecast, as represented by patterns in the historic data series, that is to
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. Forecasting is not compulsory Operational forecasting is important but it is not mandatory. operational forecasts are used to make sure that a business can respond effectively to customer demand for its
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. The quality of forecasts matters…a lot It is difficult to precisely estimate the business impact of forecast quality partly because it impacts so many variables in ways that are not easy
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. Different kinds of forecasts This book is focused on operational forecasting – the stuff you do to determine what you need to buy, produce, hold in stock or otherwise give your customers
Note: Following is an eight-part serialization of selected content from Steve Morlidge's The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting. What IS a forecast? First of all, we need to be absolutely clear what a forecast is – and what it isn’t. A forecast is a best estimate of future
The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting Steve Morlidge's latest work, The Little (Illustrated) Book of Operational Forecasting, is a unique contribution to the field. It is a guide for short term operational forecasting, delivered in a pocket-sized format, through 79 brief (two page) illustrated lessons. As I stated in my
The BFD on RFPs Software selection teams are prone to issuing lengthy requests for information (RFIs) or requests for proposals (RFPs), with page after page of check boxes for so-called requirements. Vendors stay in contention by dutifully checking off each box as either “available now,” “available in next release,” or
When you realize your organization has a forecasting problem, what do you do to solve it? In particular, if you realize you need new forecasting software, how do you begin to find it? All too often, the first step in a software selection process is the Request for Proposal (RFP)
You can still register for the 38th annual International Symposium on Forecasting, being held June 17-20 in Boulder, Colorado, at the foothills of the Rockies. Beyond the daily keynotes and over 150 presentations of new research, a separate Practitioner Track features talks on the application of forecasting research to organizational
Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's Preview of Foresight The Spring 2018 issue of Foresight—the 49th since our beginning in 2005—opens with a feature section on Supply Chain forecasting. More specifically, it addresses the very critical matter of how a company should determine its service-level targets, or the probability that no shortages occur between the time
SAS Global Forum (Denver, April 8-11) Join over 5000 attendees at the biggest SAS event of the year, and see how SAS is embedding more artificial intelligence and automation into the SAS Platform. See the SAS Forecasting and Econometrics Community for the huge list of forecasting, econometrics, and time series
IBF Free Webinar The Institute of Business Forecasting is offering a free webinar on March 29, 2018: Analytically Speaking: Transforming Forecasting & Demand Planning in a New Era The webinar will be delivered by Chad Schumacher, Senior Director of Global Analytics at Kellogg's, and you can register here. From the
Please join me and my colleague Charlie Chase, for the IBF's Predictive Business Analytics Forecasting & Planning Conference in New Orleans (April 23-25). Charlie and I will be staffing the SAS booth, and available to answer your SAS forecasting questions, or provide a software demonstration. Also, fill out a short
What is Forecast Value Added? Please enhance your Valentine's Day with this treat offered up by the Journal of Business Forecasting. Eric Wilson's very nice discussion of Forecast Value Added, originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of JBF, is now available online: "What is Forecast Value Added?" Eric also
Forecasting Research Survey The Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting at Lancaster University is conducting a new study on how demand forecasters do forecasting. They invite all practitioners who are working with forecasts, such as demand planners and supply managers, to take part in the study. The survey is anonymous
The 38th International Symposium on Forecasting will be held June 17-20 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Registration is now open. This is the last ISF in North America until at least 2022. The ISF is the premier forecasting event for researchers, with academic attendees from all over the world. Yet it
Supply Chain Lead Times Most companies with a supply chain have to deal with supply lead times. When I worked in the processed meats industry many years ago, production plans were locked three weeks in advance.That's how long it took to secure raw materials and schedule the production lines. Many
We open this 48th issue of Foresight with an announcement of the goals and participation rules for the upcoming forecasting-methods competition, the M4. The M in all the competitions— the original, the M2, the M3, and now the M4—acknowledges their primary author, Spyros Makridakis. The competitions are extremely well-known events
Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's Preview of the Fall 2017 Issue of Foresight Artificial intelligence (AI) is the name commonly given to the ability of machines to mimic the human aptitude to reason, solve problems, and learn from experience. Research in this field over the past few decades has spanned many disciplines,
In this guest blogger post, Chris Gray of Gray Research weighs in on the discussion of forecasting vs. budgeting. Chris Gray on Forecasting vs. Budgeting Generally I agree with Steve Morlidge’s points about the differences between forecasts (or sales plans) and budgets, and the fact that they are unlikely to
Chris Gray of Gray Research is a longtime contributor to the practice of Sales and Operations Planning. He is author of several books on S&OP, software selection, and other supply chain related areas, including Sales and Operations Planning Standard System (2007). In 2006 he co-authored Sales & Operations Planning –
Yesterday I recommended Steve Morlidge’s The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting, for helping to illuminate the troubling usage of business forecasts in the traditional management / budgeting process. Steve reached out to me overnight with some additional points that he shares in this guest blogger post. Steve Morlidge on Forecasts
Is There Something Beyond Budgeting? Forecasting is an integral part of the business planning and budgeting process. Presumably the forecast (which should be an "unbiased best guess" at what is really going to happen in the future) can provide a reasonable foundation upon which the annual budget and operating plans
IIF Tao Hong Award Dr. Tao Hong is a friend, former SAS colleague, former SAS basketball league opponent, a major contributor to SAS Energy Forecasting software, and now Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte. When he isn't raining three-pointers on me on the basketball court, Tao is Director of the Big
