MGT3059 demand for products

Discussion The discussion assignment provides a forum for discussing relevant topics for this week based on the course competencies covered. For this assignment, make sure you post your initial response to the Discussion Area by the due date assigned, by Saturday, May 19, 2018, 11:59 pm EST.. To support your work, use your course and text readings and also use outside sources. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format. Forecasting Select a product that you can purchase at a grocery store or at a discount retailer and respond to the following: • Identify the factors that would impact the demand for the product that you have selected. • If you wish to develop a forecast of the demand for this product in a future month (or for other appropriate time period), identify what type of forecasting method would be appropriate. • Identify the variables for which you would need values to be able to calculate an actual forecast for a future month (using the forecasting method you selected). • Create an equation that you believe would accurately predict the demand for this product in a future month and solve the equation to derive a forecast for this product in the future month that you had selected. Justify your answers using examples and reasoning. Comment on the postings of at least two peers and state whether you agree or disagree with their views. Project Management As a student, you first decided that you wanted to learn about a subject or acquire a degree. Next, you developed a course schedule based on the required courses and electives. Finally, you monitored the schedule so as to ensure you met your graduation date. You are already experienced in project management! Here's what project management entails. First, you need to plan what you are trying to do. Next, you need to create a schedule based on all the necessary activities. Remember, the schedule includes money and supplies, not just people! Finally, you need to control and monitor your resources to determine whether you need to make changes to the overall plan. Very few plans go exactly the way they were originally envisioned. To manage a complex project, you need to follow the basic steps of the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM). First, you need to define the project and prepare a list of all the activities to be performed. Next, you need to determine the relationships between the activities, in order to know which activities precede and which activities follow other activities. Seeing how a project is managed can be very helpful. See the Supplemental Media entitled “The Wedding Planner Case” to see a realistic example of a project being planned. Forecasting Life is full of uncertainties. You don't know what the weather will be tomorrow or what your organization's sales figures will be. However, you can try to predict the future. You can use the weather forecast to estimate the weather and historical sales data to predict future sales. In a business environment, a forecast is often an estimate of future demand. A forecast can be quantitative or qualitative. In addition, it can be based on factors that are either internal or external to the organization. Forecasts help reduce uncertainty as well as anticipate and manage change. There are three types of forecasts: economic, technological, and demand. In this course, you will focus on demand forecasts. An operations manager uses forecasts to anticipate inventory and capacity demand, manage lead times, estimate costs for budgeting, and improve productivity. Let's start with qualitative forecasts. There are no numbers involved in generating a qualitative analysis. There are multiple methods, such as expert opinions or a consensus, which an organization can use to collect data without performing a numerical analysis. Focus groups and market research are used to collect data on a new product in case historical data is not available. Another way to forecast a new product is to conduct a historical analogy. This process works especially well when the new product is similar to a previous product of the organization. The use of historical analogy assumes that the results experienced in offering the new product will be similar to the results experienced when the previous product was launched. In some situations, a qualitative forecast is appropriate. However, in other cases, a qualitative forecast can be developed in conjunction with a quantitative forecast. Such quantitative forecasts will be discussed next. Quantitative Forecasting Quantitative forecasts are number based. They may be simple or may rely heavily on statistical methods. You can determine the quality of a forecast by calculating a number of different measures of forecast accuracy. Among the most widely used are the mean absolute deviation (MAD), the mean squared error (MSE), or the mean absolute percent error (MAPE). Besides forecast accuracy, other factors also should be considered when evaluating a forecast. For example, is the data seasonal? What are the current trends? Are the customers' preferences changing? These factors can have an impact on the forecast and need to be included. Seasonality can be included through the use of a seasonal index that relates the average demand in a period to the average demand in all periods. A forecast can be created by graphing a series of historical data points and then fitting a line to the series to predict future values. This graph is considered a trend projection because it assumes the future will follow the current trend and the same path. Another technique that helps you forecast demand is regression. This technique assumes a linear relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Regression differs from other forecasting techniques because it can provide a distribution of possible values rather than a single value. This distribution is referred to as the standard error of the estimate. In addition, a regression equation indicates through the coefficient of correlation how closely the model represents your data. Quantitative forecasts require calculation. See the Supplemental Media entitled “Forecasts and Errors” in order to review multiple forecasting techniques and the calculations associated with the measures of forecast error listed in the video. References South University Online. (2018). Week 2: Lectures. MGT3059:Operations Management [Online Course]. Retrieved from myeclassonline.com

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