Single Exponential Smoothing for Forecast Inventory Days Of Supply

Use Single Exponential Smoothing to forecast inventory days of supply when your data do not have a trend or seasonal component.

This example applies to the Supply Chain Module. For more information, go to www.minitab.com/supply-chain-module.

Example

Inventory days of supply is the number of days until inventory is depleted if the company does not add to its supply. To calculate inventory days of supply, first divide the value of the average inventory by the expected product demand. Then multiply this ratio by the number of days in the time period. Inventory days of supply is usually calculated monthly.

In this worksheet, Months on Hand is the Y-variable in time order.

C1
`Days of Supply`
38.06
37.8
68
62.3

How-to

Choose Solutions Modules > Functions > Supply Chain KPIs, then click Launch.
Under Inventory, select Inventory days of supply.
Select Forecast inventory days of supply, then click OK.
Select Single Exponential Smoothing, then click OK.
In Variable, enter the column that contains the inventory days of supply data.
Select Generate forecasts.
- In Number of forecasts, enter the number of consecutive time periods that you want forecasts for.
- In Starting from origin, specify the row number for the first forecast. If you leave this field blank, Minitab starts the forecasts at the end of the time series.
Click OK.

Tip

For more information about this analysis, click Help in the main dialog box.