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.
Have you taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment? It is a psychological test wherefrom you are classified on Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judging vs. Perceiving. I, along with roughly 15% of the population, come out an ISTJ or "Guardian Inspector" (the single largest
Is there anything you'd like to tell your management? Of course, in the spirit of the holiday season, I mean is there anything you'd like to tell your management that isn't anatomically impossible? If so, please join me and Ryan Rickard, Sr. Supply Chain Manager at Newell Rubbermaid, for our
Managing expectations for forecast accuracy is very important, as often those expectations are extreme after management invests in a new system. Software vendors have also been known to make overly (choose one: optimistic? sanguine? idyllic?) accuracy claims as part of their sales pitch. Of course, there is no arbitrary level of accuracy
