Category Archives: Publications

ISF 2018 Presentation: The inventory impact of including macroeconomic leading indicators in global supply chain management

Yves R. Sagaert, Nikolaos Kourentzes, Stijn De Vuyst and El-houssaine Aghezzaf, ISf2018, 19th June 2018 Supply chain management is increasingly performed at a global level. The decision process is often based on tactical sales forecasts, which has been shown to benefit from including relevant exogenous information. Leading indicators that cover different aspects of macroeconomic dynamics… Read More »

ISF2018 Presentation: Interpreting algorithmic and qualitative information when making judgmental forecast adjustments

Anna Sroginis, Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes, ISF2018, 19th June 2018 Despite the continuous improvements in statistical forecasting, human judgment remains essential in business forecasting and demand planning. Typically, forecasters do not solely rely on statistical forecasts, which are obtained from various Forecasting Support Systems (FSS); they also adjust forecasts according to their knowledge, experience… Read More »

ISF 2018 Presentation: Estimating the market potential pre-launch with search traffic

Oliver Schaer, Nikolaos Kourentzes and Robert Fildes, ISF2018, 18th June 2018 With shorter product life-cycles and increased competition, generating pre-launch forecasts is a vital task for companies. Forecasting the success of a new product is challenging as one need to estimate the market potential. In practice, this is typically done by expert judgment. However, there… Read More »

ISF 2018 Presentation: The dynamics of judgmental adjustments

Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes, ISF2018, 19th June 2018 Judgement plays a central role in forecasting, as statistical forecasts are often modified before informing user decisions. There is strong evidence that judgemental adjustments can be beneficial, yet inconsistent, often harming forecast accuracy. This has motivated research into how to best manage judgemental adjustments to maximise… Read More »

OR59 Keynote: Uncertainty in predictive modelling

I recently presented at the OR59 conference my views and current work (with colleagues) on uncertainty in predictive modelling. I think this is a topic that deserves quite a bit of research attention, as it has substnatial implications for estimation, model selection and eventually decision making. The talk has three parts: Argue (as others before… Read More »

ISF 2017 presentation: A hierarchical approach to forecasting Scandinavian unemployment

This is joint work with Rickard Sandberg and looks at the implicit connections enforced by hierarchical time series forecasting, between the nodes of the hierarchy, contrasting them to VAR models that captures connections explicitly. Abstract The four major Scandinavian economies (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway) have high workforce mobility and depending on market dynamics the… Read More »

ISF2017 presentation: DIY forecasting – judgement, models & judgmental model selection

This is joint work with Fotios Petropoulos and Kostantinos Nikolopoulos and discusses the performance of experts selecting forecasting models, against automatic statistical model selection, as well as providing guidelines how to maximise the benefits. This is very exciting research, demonstrating the both some limitations of statistical model selection (and avenues for new research), as well… Read More »

ISF2017 presentation: Call centre forecasting using temporal aggregation

This is joint work with Devon K. Barrow and Bahman Rostami-Tabar and is an initial exploration of the benefits of using Multiple Temporal Aggregation, as implemented in MAPA for call centre forecasting. The preliminary results are encouraging. More details in the attached presentation. Abstract With thousands of call centres worldwide employing millions and serving billions… Read More »