Forecasting

This course provides an overview of forecasting in logistics, delving into its historical significance and the factors influencing its accuracy. It touches on the long-standing practice of forecasting, citing examples from various domains, including inaccuracies in IT industry predictions. The focus then shifts to business forecasting, outlining its objectives and emphasizing the importance of forecasting impact on decision-making. The text discusses the level of detail in forecasting, considering dimensions such as time, geography, and product. It categorizes forecasting based on time horizons and introduces qualitative and quantitative forecasting methods. The distinction between qualitative methods, involving expert opinions, and quantitative methods, utilizing numerical data and time series analysis, is highlighted. The importance of past patterns in quantitative forecasting is emphasized.

You learn to apply the knowledge gained in this course through a game using Excel as well as R for simple forecasting methods.

This publication is part of the project ‘small projects 2022 route transport and logistics' with project number NWA.1418.22.023 which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).