A few weeks ago I gave a talk at Amazon’s 2019 AMLC in Seattle. The talk was focused on current research in temporal and cross-temporal hierarchies. People who have been following my blog will be familiar with the topic and recent advances. This talk is different in the sense that it does not go in… Read More »
I was recently invited to a workshop focused on forecasting and supply chain management at Valencia Polytechnic University. Many thanks to Ester Guijarro for organising the workshop and helping to bring together forecasters and supply chain experts! I presented on optimising forecasting model parameters for inventory management. You can find the presentation here, and a… Read More »
This year’s International Symposium on Forecasting has been a great success. Very exciting talks and large attendance from both academics and practitioners. I really enjoy conferences that the two groups interact organically: only this way research is both relevant and adopted fast, so that it makes a difference! This year I was invited by Haiyan… Read More »
Nikolaos Kourentzes, Ivan Svetunkov and Stephan Kolassa, ISF2018, 20th June 2018. In doing forecast selection or combination we typically rely on some performance metric. For example, that could be Akaike Information Criterion or some cross-validated accuracy measure. From these we can either pick the top performer, or construct combination weights. There is ample empirical evidence… Read More »
Patrick Saoud, Nikolaos Kourentzes and John Boylan, ISF2018, 20th June 2018 Many supply chains experience the Bullwhip effect, defined as the upstream amplification of demand variability. This information distortion results in a misalignment of forecasts, generating expensive business costs. A proposed remedy in the literature is the sharing of Point of Sales information data among… Read More »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »