Demand-Driven Forecasting: A Structured Approach to Forecasting, 2nd Edition

Foreword

Demand-Driven Forecasting was a long-overdue practical book on business forecasting when it was first published in 2009. One of the industry's top business forecasters, Charles W. Chase (also known as Charlie in the industry) has done a remarkable job in revising this second edition. I have been involved in business forecasting—the demand forecasting that is done by industry forecasters—for over 30 years and have not seen a better reference book for them. The content Charlie has added has made the revision much more relevant and useful. This is especially true as companies are doing more demand shaping during the turbulent economic times since the Great Recession. All businesses are keen to understand what is driving their volatile demand as well as to leverage demand shaping to compete and thrive in tough economic climates.

A JOURNEY DOWN MEMORY LANE

Business forecasting during my early years was largely based on the exponential smoothing forecasting methods developed by industry practitioner Robert G. (Bob) Brown, who published several books starting in the late 1950s. These exponential smoothing methods live on today and are often the under-the-hood statistical forecasting engines powering many software packages. Forecasting methods have evolved since that time to include a wide variety of statistical time series methods, many of which were discussed in several revisions of forecasting books written by two leading academic forecasters, Spyros Makridakis and Steven ...