Title: A supply chain forecast and planning application for small businesses

Authors: Jishan Zhu; Yajun Yang

Addresses: School of Business, SUNY College at Old Westbury, 223 Store Hill Road, Old Westbury, NY 11568-0210, USA. ' Department of Mathematics, Farmingdale State College, 2350 Broadhollow Road, Farmingdale, NY 11735-1021, USA

Abstract: Supply chain demand forecast and inventory purchase planning are essential business operations to many businesses. In this paper, we discuss the strategies and techniques in the supply chain demand forecast and inventory purchase planning for small businesses from practitioner's perspective. The strategies and techniques include using point-of-sales (POS) data for better demand forecast, designing and developing an Excel-based spreadsheet modelling tool to assist the decision-making. The paper demonstrates: 1) forecasting techniques using regression model; 2) purchase planning using Excel-based spreadsheets; 3) data lookup techniques to link sales, purchase and inventory data.

Keywords: supply chain forecasting; supply chain planning; small businesses; demand forecasts; business applications; data lookup; inventory planning; purchase planning; data analysis strategies; small firms; supply chain management; SCM; decision making; regression modelling; spreadsheets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDATS.2012.050403

International Journal of Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies, 2012 Vol.4 No.4, pp.378 - 397

Published online: 06 Sep 2014 *

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