Demand Forecasting and Inventory Management:
A short course
Course Contents
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Demand Forecasting: Importance of forecasting; qualitative techniques of
forecasting.
Forecasting models: Moving average, Weighted moving average, exponential
smoothing.
Advanced forecasting models: Exponentially weighted moving average; isolating
trend and seasonal components.
Measures of forecasting accuracy and error. Case study on forecasting.
Inventory Management: Types of inventory, inventory costs, performance
measures.
Economic Order Quantity (or Interval) model: Basic model, all-units quantity
discount model, etc.
Just-in-time procurement: Definition and comparison with the EOQ model.
Material Requirement Planning: Using MRP to determine order schedules for
suppliers.
Vendor-managed inventory: Realities and myths surrounding VMI practice.
Course Objectives
This objective of this course is to familiarize the participants with the demand
forecasting and inventory management techniques and strategies. They would also
come to appreciate the pros and cons of the newly emerging approaches, and what it
takes to implement them.
The course would also enable the participants to appreciate the important role the
demand forecasting and inventory management functions play in effective supplychain management of their companies.
During the course, the participants would be given a chance to apply their newly
acquired knowledge to test by working on simple yet powerful quantitative examples.
They would also be exposed to some real-life case studies to help illustrate the
techniques and technologies learned.
Who Should Attend
This course is especially designed for Inventory, Materials Management and
Purchasing executives in the electronics, semiconductor, or any discrete-part
manufacturing company. The participants would find the contents state-of-the-art,
and the course helpful in streamlining their demand forecasting and inventory
management operations. This in turn would help them to optimize the entire supplychain their company is part of.
Course Lecturer
Dr. Rajesh Piplani is an assistant professor and the deputy director of the Center for
Engineering and Technology Management in the school of Mechanical and
Production Engineering at NTU. He obtained his M.S. in Industrial Engineering from
Arizona State University in 1990, and his Ph. D. from Purdue University in 1995. Dr.
Piplani is listed in Marquis Who is Who in Science and Engineering in USA (19981999).
Dr. Piplani's interests are in the area of supply chain management of manufacturing
enterprises, logistics planning, and design and analysis of manufacturing systems. Dr.
Piplani has published in many International journals and has also presented at various
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research conferences worldwide.
Dr. Piplani has over seven years of industry experience in India and USA. For four
years, he worked as a quality control engineer for a heavy electrical manufacturer.
From 1995 to 1998, he worked for Texas Instruments, Dallas as a Sr. Systems
Engineer, leading the development of capacity analysis and throughput management
modules of the manufacturing execution system being developed for their
semiconductor fabrication facilities worldwide.
Since 1998, he has been on the faculty of NTU. As deputy Director of the M. Sc.
Logistics program, he has designed and taught courses in the area of procurement
planning, inventory and supply-chain management. He also offers short-courses for
the industry, and has consulted with many local companies on planning and inventory
management related issues.