Since 2024, Kandrika Pritularga and I have run a demand forecasting principles course at the Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting. We ran it three times, and it has received good reviews from the participants. They liked that the material was motivated by real-life problems, that we explained it in detail, answered all the questions, and had helpful workshops. So, having discussed this with Kandrika and Nikos, we decided to continue the course, but now under the umbrella of OpenForecast, and this time Nikos Kourentzes and I will be teaching it together.

Demand Forecasting Principles is a four-week online course running in October 2026. We plan to have eight live Zoom sessions (two per week), with hands-on workshops in both R and Python between them. All sessions are recorded and shared with the participants for their reference.

The course will cover all the essentials of forecasting, starting from the forecasting principles, moving to the simple methods, ETS, intermittent demand, forecast evaluation, judgement, and finishing with forecast combinations.

Who is this for?

• demand planners,
• data scientists,
• business analysts
• anyone who works with forecasts and wants to understand what happens behind the numbers.

What do you need to know?

You don’t need prior knowledge of forecasting or statistics – we explain everything as we go, in as much detail as you need. Yet, experienced practitioners will still find plenty that is new: some of our previous participants were seasoned forecasters and said exactly that.

The details, programme, prices and booking are available here. Students get a discount.

Exact October dates will be announced next week, but you can already book your place.

If you are not sure whether the course fits you or your team, get in touch.

Message Demand Forecasting Principles course, October 2026 first appeared on OpenForecast.

Back in 1990, Robert Fildes joined Lancaster University and established the Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting (called “Lancaster Centre for Forecasting” back then). The main idea of the centre was to bridge the gap between academia and practice in demand forecasting. The academic world rarely listens to the things that bother business, thinking that those problems are boring, while business usually finds “hacks” to the problems rather than proper solutions. Robert wanted to listen to what business has to say and to use rigorous scientific methods in solving the problems. And while this has been a challenging road, I think it was wildly successful. As Robert says himself, for many years it was a journey of a man and a dog (and we all know who that man was). But after a decade of work, the centre started growing and attracting such smart people as Sven Crone, Kostas Nikolopoulos, Juan Ramon Trapero, Fotios Petropoulos, Devon Barrow, Nikos Kourentzes, John Boylan and many others. If you pick a random person working in forecasting in academia, chances are they have some connection with the CMAF and Robert Fildes.

The centre has evolved, it has grown, and after some time, for some of us it was time to move on. Nikos left Lancaster University back in 2019, I left it in August 2026. Over the last couple of years, the CMAF has changed, and we feel that Robert’s legacy should continue, OpenForecast being one of the potential ways forward. And I’m glad to say that Robert has agreed to join OpenForecast as an advisor.

So, I have started building the OpenForecast company, following the same principles that Robert built CMAF on. I have updated my website, which has worked as my personal blog for the last 10 years or so, to explain what the company does and how we can help. This is now the website of a company offering demand forecasting and inventory consultancy, and practitioner training. The books (e.g. ADAM and the Statistics lecture notes) are still there, all the resources are still there, and the packages that I have developed together with my colleagues are still open source and will stay that way. And most importantly, the blog is still there — it just lives in a different place now.

What’s changed is that the whole website now has a company around it. So, if your company keeps running out of stock, faces over-ordering, or relies on a system nobody understands, get in touch. And stay tuned — I plan to write more posts on the topic.

Message Website redesign first appeared on OpenForecast.