On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands

We investigate the relative effectiveness of top-down versus bottom-up strategies for forecasting the demand of an item that belongs to a product family. The demand for each item in the family is assumed to follow a first-order univariate autoregressive process. Under the top-down strategy, the aggr...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Viswanathan, S., Widiarta, Handik, Piplani, Rajesh
Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100838
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18143
_version_ 1826118065319837696
author Viswanathan, S.
Widiarta, Handik
Piplani, Rajesh
author2 School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
author_facet School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Viswanathan, S.
Widiarta, Handik
Piplani, Rajesh
author_sort Viswanathan, S.
collection NTU
description We investigate the relative effectiveness of top-down versus bottom-up strategies for forecasting the demand of an item that belongs to a product family. The demand for each item in the family is assumed to follow a first-order univariate autoregressive process. Under the top-down strategy, the aggregate demand is forecasted by using the historical data of the family demand. The demand forecast for the items is then derived by proportional allocation of the aggregate forecast. Under the bottom-up strategy, the demand forecast for each item is directly obtained by using the historical demand data of the particular item. In both strategies, the forecasting technique used is exponential smoothing. We analytically evaluate the condition under which one forecasting strategy is preferred over the other when the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand time series for all the items is identical. We show that when the lag-1 autocorrelation is smaller than or equal to 1/3, the maximum difference in the performance of the two forecasting strategies is only 1%. However, if the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand for at least one of the items is greater than 1/3, then the bottom-up strategy consistently outperforms the top-down strategy, irrespective of the items' proportion in the family and the coefficient of correlation between the item demands. A simulation study reveals that the analytical findings hold even when the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand processes is not identical.
first_indexed 2024-10-01T04:37:19Z
format Journal Article
id ntu-10356/100838
institution Nanyang Technological University
language English
last_indexed 2024-10-01T04:37:19Z
publishDate 2013
record_format dspace
spelling ntu-10356/1008382023-05-19T06:44:43Z On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands Viswanathan, S. Widiarta, Handik Piplani, Rajesh School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Nanyang Business School We investigate the relative effectiveness of top-down versus bottom-up strategies for forecasting the demand of an item that belongs to a product family. The demand for each item in the family is assumed to follow a first-order univariate autoregressive process. Under the top-down strategy, the aggregate demand is forecasted by using the historical data of the family demand. The demand forecast for the items is then derived by proportional allocation of the aggregate forecast. Under the bottom-up strategy, the demand forecast for each item is directly obtained by using the historical demand data of the particular item. In both strategies, the forecasting technique used is exponential smoothing. We analytically evaluate the condition under which one forecasting strategy is preferred over the other when the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand time series for all the items is identical. We show that when the lag-1 autocorrelation is smaller than or equal to 1/3, the maximum difference in the performance of the two forecasting strategies is only 1%. However, if the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand for at least one of the items is greater than 1/3, then the bottom-up strategy consistently outperforms the top-down strategy, irrespective of the items' proportion in the family and the coefficient of correlation between the item demands. A simulation study reveals that the analytical findings hold even when the lag-1 autocorrelation of the demand processes is not identical. 2013-12-06T05:43:12Z 2019-12-06T20:29:12Z 2013-12-06T05:43:12Z 2019-12-06T20:29:12Z 2006 2006 Journal Article Widiarta, H., Viswanathan, S., & Piplani, R. (2007). On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands. Naval Research Logistics, 54(2), 176-188. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100838 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18143 10.1002/nav.20200 en Naval research logistics © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
spellingShingle Viswanathan, S.
Widiarta, Handik
Piplani, Rajesh
On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title_full On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title_fullStr On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title_full_unstemmed On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title_short On the effectiveness of top-down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
title_sort on the effectiveness of top down strategy for forecasting autoregressive demands
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/100838
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18143
work_keys_str_mv AT viswanathans ontheeffectivenessoftopdownstrategyforforecastingautoregressivedemands
AT widiartahandik ontheeffectivenessoftopdownstrategyforforecastingautoregressivedemands
AT piplanirajesh ontheeffectivenessoftopdownstrategyforforecastingautoregressivedemands