Forecast Preformance Graph

[To Demand Planning]

Usage

Use this window to examine you forecast preformance.

The graph is accessed trught the Query tollbar by pushing the Graph button, only the parts that's matching the current set query will be displayed in the graph.

The graph was made to try to answer the guestions are my forecasts any good? or what is a good forecast? These are both good questions but can be a litte hard to answer correctly, with this graph we try to give you the answer to that question. In short the parts that are in the red area does not have a good forecast. The parts in the green have a ok/good forecast.

The graph shows how each parts forecast accuracy (y-axis) is compared to the parts demand volatility/variance of demand (x-axis) the size of the balls shows is determined by the parts forecast error cost (Value of MAE). The color of the ball also indicates the forecast preformance, green is good, yellow is borderline and read in not good, the colors are mixed so that you will have all colors ranging from green to yellow and read. So a light read ball indicates a part that is in the limmit between read and yellow, so its not very bad but its worse than a more yellow part.

This graph will tell you wheter or not you are doing a good forecast job, since if the part is placed in the red area this means that the parts forecast accuracy lower/worse than the variation in the parts historical demand. Or said in a different way the foreceast og the part is varies more than the parts historical demand, so running a moving average model over a longer period should give an imporved forecast, or decreasing the alpha value for an EWMA Level forecast model should make it better. If a part is in the white area this meas that the forecast accuracy is higer/better than the parts historical demand variation so in this case the forecast model, seasonal profiles and/or the forecasters adjustments are doing a good job in forecasting the part.

The part you want to look at first are parts that have a large ball where the color of it is in the red, the darker red the worse is the forecast job.

The graph is divided into a red and a white part, the red part indicates the area where you want to have the least number of parts the darker red the area the worse it is, the line where the red area begins indicates the average line. Normaly most of your parts will be clustered around this line, the longer into the white area a part is situated the better is the parts forecast.

The performance graph can be viewed based on the specific time periods. It facilitates defining Length and Offset for forecast performance graph. Length indicates the total time period for which forecast error measurement is calculated. The minimum value entered for length should be two or more than that. Offset means the number of periods to the backward from last historical period to the end of forecast error measurement periods. The sum of offset and length should be less than or equal to the maximum historical data periods available. Once user has selected the Error/Analysis Graph icon, the range dialog box will get prompted before the graph is displayed. In the range dialog box, User is able to change the length and offset based on their business requirements. The size of the balls indicates how expensive the forecast error for that particular part is. It considers the unit cost of the respective inventory part. When the unit graph is selected in system, it displays the graph but then all parts have a unit cost of 1. So the size of the balls will indicate how many parts is forecasted wrong.

The value on the y-axis is the forecast accuracy measured by the MSE accuracy measure, the value on the x-axis is the Variance from mean of the historical demand. See Forecast accuracy for details.

Note that the x and y-axis are logaritmic.

Note

If you hold the cursor inside a ball the parts flow and part number will be displayed as a tooltip, clicking in a ball will bring the part up in the Demand Planning GUI, for further work/analysis.

Element Color Read/Write Description
Part Read-only Indicate a part/flow, the color indicates good (green), borderline (yellow), bad(red). The size of the ball is a measure of the value of the forecast error, the larger the ball the higher the value.

Activity Diagrams

N/A

Activities

The graph can be used to find the parts that needs your forecasting focus, you select the part by clicking in the ball representing the part, if you hold the cursur still inside a ball the part number and flow id is displayed in a tooltip.

Fields

N/A