Demand forecasting

Demand forecasting is the art and science of forecasting customer demand to drive holistic execution of such demand by corporate supply chain and business management. Demand forecasting involves techniques including both informal methods, such as educated guesses, and quantitative methods, such as the use of historical sales data and statistical techniques or current data from test markets. Demand forecasting may be used in production planning, inventory management, and at times in assessing future capacity requirements, or in making decisions on whether to enter a new market

Contents

• Methods that rely on qualitative assessment
• Methods that rely on quantitative data
• Some of the other methods
• References

Demand forecasting is predicting future demand for the product. In other words, it refers to the prediction of probable demand for a product or a service on the basis of the past events and prevailing trends in the present.