Intermittent demand forecasting and inventory control with multiple temporal and cross-sectional aggregation and disaggregation methods

摘要

This paper reviews the intermittent demand forecasting methods and compares multiple temporal aggregation and disaggregation forecasting methods and cross-sectional aggregation and disaggregation forecasting methods and then proposes a new forecasting method by combining these two methods. We use the procurement data of the State Grid Corporation of China to study these demand forecasting methods. In terms of forecasting performance, we use two forecasting error measurements as well as a real data based inventory simulation experiment. The results of the case study indicate that multiple temporal aggregation and disaggregation forecasting methods will generate smaller forecasting error than exponential smoothing method and cross-sectional forecasting methods and the combined forecasting methods will have better inventory performance than the previous forecasting methods.