1.1 Forecasting, planning, and analytics
While there are many definitions of what a forecast is, I like the following one, proposed by Sergey Svetunkov (translated by me from Russian into English from Svetunkov and Svetunkov, 2014): A forecast is a scientifically justified assertion about possible states of an object in the future. This definition has several important elements. First, it does not have the word “probability” in it, because in some cases, forecasts do not rely on rigorous statistical methods and theory of probabilities. For example, the Delphi method allows obtaining judgmental forecasts, typically focusing on what to expect, not on the probability side. Second, an essential word in the definition is “scientific”. If a prediction is made based on coffee grounds, then it is not a forecast. Judgmental predictions, on the other hand, can be considered forecasts if a person has a reason behind them. If they do not, this exercise should be called “foretelling”, not forecasting. Finally, the word “future” is important as well, as it shows the focus of the discipline: without the future, there is no forecasting, only overfitting. As for the definition of forecasting, it is a process of producing forecasts – as simple as that.
Forecasting is a vital activity carried out by many organisations, some of which do it unconsciously or label it as “demand planning” or “predictive analytics”. However, there is a difference between the terms “forecasting” and “planning”. The latter relies on the former and implies the company’s actions to adjust its decisions. For example, if we forecast that the sales will go down, a company may make some marketing decisions to increase the demand on the product. The first part relates to forecasting, while the second relates to planning. If a company does not like a forecast, it should change something in its activities, not in the forecast itself. It is important not to confuse these terms in practice.
Another crucial thing to keep in mind is that any forecasting activity should be done to inform decisions. Forecasting for the sake of forecasting is pointless. Yes, we can forecast the overall number of hospitalisations due to SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world for the next decade, but what decisions can be made based on that? If there are some decisions, then this exercise is worthwhile. If not, then this is just a waste of time.
Example 1.1 Retailers typically need to order some amount of milk that they will sell over the next week. They do not know how much they will sell, so they usually order, hoping to satisfy, let us say, 95% of demand. This situation tells us that the forecasts need to be made a week ahead, they should be cumulative (considering the overall demand during a week before the following order), and that they should focus on an upper bound of a 95% prediction interval. Producing only point forecasts would not be helpful in this situation.
Related to this is the question of forecast accuracy. In reality, accurate forecasts do not always translate to good decisions. This is because many different aspects of reality need to be taken into account, and forecasting focuses only on one of them. Capturing the variability of demand correctly is sometimes more useful than producing very accurate point forecasts – this is because many decisions are based on distributions of possible values rather than on point forecasts. The classical example of this situation is inventory management, where the ordering decisions are made based on quantiles of distribution to form safety stock. Furthermore, the orders are typically done in pallets, so it is not important whether the expected demand is 99 or 95 units if a pallet includes 100 units of a product. This means that whenever we produce forecasts, we need to consider how they will be used.
In some cases, accurate forecasts might be wasted if people make decisions differently and/or do not trust what they see. For example, a demand planner might decide that a straight line is not an appropriate forecast for their data and would start changing the values, introducing noise. This might happen due to a lack of experience, expertise, or trust in models (Spavound and Kourentzes, 2022), and this means that it is crucial to understand who will use the forecasts and how.
Finally, in practice, not all issues can be resolved with forecasting. In some cases, companies can make decisions based on other reasons. For example, promotional decisions can be dictated by the existing stocks of the product that need to be moved out. In another case, if the holding costs for a product are low, then there is no need to spend time forecasting the demand for it – a company can implement a simple replenishment policy, ordering, when the stock reaches some threshold. And in times of crisis, some decisions are dictated by the company’s financial situation, not by forecasts: arguably, you do not need to predict demand for products that are sold out of prestige if they are not profitable, and a company needs to cut costs.
Summarising all the above, it makes sense to determine what decisions will be made based on forecasts, by whom and how. There is no need to waste time and effort on improving the forecasting accuracy if the process in the company is flawed and forecasts are then ignored, not needed, or amended inappropriately.
As for analytics, this is a relatively new term, meaning the systematic process of data analysis to support informed decisions. The term is broad and relies on many research areas, including forecasting, simulations, optimisation, etc. In this monograph, we will focus on the forecasting aspect, occasionally discussing how to analyse the existing processes (thus touching on the analytics part) and how various models could help make good practical decisions.