Better forecasts. Less stock. Fewer stockouts.
OpenForecast turns uncertain demand into confident decisions. We are a specialist demand forecasting and inventory consultancy and training provider, using research-grade statistical methods to help businesses cut stockouts, reduce excess stock, and free up cash – even in the hardest cases, like the intermittent demand of spare parts and industrial distribution.
Talk to us about your forecasting and inventory challenge.
The problem we solve
Most demand planning runs on tools that quietly cost money. Typical forecasting engines extrapolate the past and break the moment a promotion, price change, or supply disruption enters the picture. ERP forecasting modules behave like black boxes – hard to understand, harder to defend – and underperform on exactly the items that matter most. The result shows up in two places at once: cash tied up in stock you don’t need, and lost sales on the lines you do.
We fix the whole chain, not just the forecast: from the data (including the demand your sales history doesn’t show, because you were out of stock), through the model, to the safety stock and replenishment decisions your team runs every week.
What we do
Forecasting & Inventory Diagnostic. A fixed-scope health check of your current setup: how accurate your forecasts really are, where the gaps are – censored demand, wrong error measures, mis-set safety stocks – and a prioritised action list. The low-risk way to find out what better forecasting is worth to you before committing to a larger project.
Forecasting and inventory consulting. We build forecasting and inventory models around how your business actually operates: your demand patterns, your drivers (promotions, pricing, seasonality), your ERP, and your planning cycle. Our particular strength is where standard tools fail most visibly – intermittent and slow-moving demand: spare parts, components, industrial distribution, long-tail SKUs.
Practitioner training. Courses in demand forecasting, inventory management, statistics, and analytics – built from a decade of executive training delivered by the Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting at Lancaster University. Your planning team learns not just which buttons to press, but why the methods work, so the results outlast the engagement.
Why OpenForecast
Research-grade methods, in the open. Our work runs on the open-source forecasting packages we build and maintain – smooth, greybox, and friends – grounded in a published methodology (ADAM), benchmarked on international forecasting competition data, and used by analysts worldwide. You can inspect exactly what our methods do before you ever hire us.
Glass-box, not black-box. Every model we build is transparent and interpretable. You can see the logic, explain the numbers to finance, and stand behind the plan.
Academic rigour, practitioner focus. OpenForecast is led by a Ivan Svetunkov, the author of multiple papers published in peer-reviewed journals, with years of experience helping companies make forecasting work in practice – not in slides.
Not ready to talk yet?
Everything we know is published in the open: two books, a decade of articles, and full documentation of our methods. Start with the resources, explore the packages, or read the blog.
If your forecasts drive real inventory decisions, we should talk. Write to mail@openforecast.org and tell us what you are wrestling with – we will tell you honestly whether and how we can help.