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

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