POS and Demand Forecasting

This program includes approximately 8 contact hours of classroom instruction. Please contact us if you wish to apply this program towards your continuing education or professional development requirements.

Inaccurate and unreliable forecasts create substantial problems throughout the supply chain. Forecast error is often one of an organization’s most significant pain points, resulting in out of stocks and/or too much inventory. To facilitate improved supply chain planning, many retailers now share point-of-sale (POS) data with partners. While POS sharing is prevalent, its performance impact is limited by the ability to effectively extract intelligence from the data. In this course, participants will gain a better understanding of how to utilize POS to create relevant, data-driven, and actionable forecasts.

In this course, the participant will:

• Learn to utilize POS to create more accurate demand and order forecasts,
• Identify when forecasts can be improved,
• Quantify the business impact of reducing forecast error,
• Interpret forecasting metrics,
• Leverage multiple forecasting methodologies.

After completing this course, supply chain decision makers and analysts will be better positioned to extract intelligence from POS data by identifying where forecast opportunities exist and leveraging POS to create more accurate and reliable forecasts.

Please note:  Participants must be familiar with Microsoft Excel.  Sample data sets will be provided, but you are welcome to bring your own data.

MATTHEW A. WALLER
Professor
Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Management

Degrees

• BS, University of Missouri, Columbia, Economics, 1988
• MS, Pennsylvania State University, Management Science, 1991
• Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Business Logistics, 1993

Teaching Areas

• Supply Chain Management
• Business Logistics
• Supply Chain Modeling

Research Interests

• Retail and Consumer Products Supply Chain Management
• Global Supply Chain Management
• Supply Chain Modeling

Professor Matthew A. Waller is the Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain Management in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Waller’s research focuses on retail and consumer products supply chain management as well as global supply chain management. Since his first publication in 1990, his research has been published in journals such as Decision Sciences, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Logistics Management, International Journal of Production Economics and many others. He has published opinion pieces in Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal Asia.

He is an inventor on a patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, involving replenishment, assortment, and space optimization: Waller, M.A. and Dulaney, E.F. System, Method and Article of Manufacture to Optimize Inventory and Merchandising Shelf Space Utilization, Patent No. US 6,341,269 B1, Date of Patent Jan. 22, 2002.

Since January of 2006, he has been Systems Editor of Journal of Business Logistics and since 2007 he has been editor of International Journal of Logistics Management. From January 2008 to June 2009 he lived in Shanghai, China, conducting research on global business in China as well as running an Executive MBA cohort for the Sam. M. Walton College of Business. He is a member of CSCMP and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, China.

Recent Research Articles

• RFID's Impact on Out of Stocks: A Sales Velocity Analysis
• Does RFID Reduce Out of Stocks? A Preliminary Analysis
• A Practical Look at RFID
• Supply Chain Information Sharing In A Vendor Managed Inventory Partnership