Explain the need for sales forecasting. How are forecasting methods classified?
The past data about the load on a machine centre is as given below:
|
Month,
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
|
Load
Machine
-Hours
|
585
|
611
|
656
|
748
|
863
|
914
|
964
|
- If a five month moving average is used to forecast the next month’s demand, compute the forecast of the load on the centre in the 8th month.
ii Compute a weighted three month moving average for the 8th month, where the weights are 0.5 for the latest month, 0.3 and 0.2 for the other months, respectively.