Demand forecasting is the art and science of forecasting customer demand to drive holistic execution of such

demand by corporate supply chain and business management. Demand forecasting involves techniques
including both informal methods, such as educated guesses, and quantitative methods, such as the use of
historical sales data and statistical techniques or current data from test markets. Demand forecasting may be
used in production planning, inventory management, and at times in assessing future capacity requirements, or
in making decisions on whether to enter a new market
Demand forecasting is predicting future demand for the product. In other words, it refers to the prediction of
probable demand for a product or a service on the basis of the past events and prevailing trends in the present.

Methods that rely on qualitative assessment[edit]

Forecasting demand based on expert opinion. Some of the types in this method are,

Unaided judgment

Prediction market

Delphi technique

Game theory

Judgmental bootstrapping

Simulated interaction

Intentions and expectations surveys

jury of executive method

Methods that rely on quantitative data[edit]

Discrete Event Simulation

Extrapolation

Group method of data handling (GMDH)

Reference class forecasting

Quantitative analogies

Rule-based forecasting

Neural networks

Data mining

Conjoint analysis

Causal models

Segmentation

Exponential Smoothing Models

Box-Jenkins Models

Hybrid Models

Some of the other methods[edit]

a) time series projection methods this includes:

moving average method

exponential smoothing method

trend projection methods

b) causal methods this includes:

chain-ratio metho end use method