General Approaches to Forecasting

This operations management lecture is an introduction to the overall approaches to forecasting. It covers the difference between qualitative and quantitative forecasting as well as judgemental, time series, and associative forecasting. It also explains the differences between long range, medium range, and short range forecasting. It discusses the components of demand: trend, seasonality, cycles, irregular variation, and random variation. Naive forecasting is discussed briefly. Seven approaches to time series forecasting are introduced.