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Inventory · Definition

Demand Forecasting

Estimating future demand to plan purchasing and stock levels.

Demand forecasting projects how much of each item you will need, using sales history, seasonality, trend and known events such as promotions or tenders. It converts the past into a purchasing plan.

No forecast is right, so the useful measure is forecast error and how you buffer against it. A modest forecast plus honest safety stock beats an elaborate model treated as truth.

Also called

  • demand planning
  • sales forecasting

See it in AWRA OpsHub

Predictive Insights

Demand Forecasting is not just a definition here

Inventory runs on this vocabulary every day in AWRA OpsHub — 44 of our 257 glossary terms describe things the platform actually does.