Notes: Policy Maker Release 1.9 purports to provide forecasting and management tools for inventory of finished goods. The analytical tools are *very* sophisticated, but the interface with the computer is not; I could not get the program to read the sample history data file provided until I copied it to the root directory. Apparently, the program does not recognize hard disk directories for data files.
This program is *not* for the casual user - it is designed for an inventory manager concerned with maintaining stock inventories at minimal cost. Specific forecasting techniques include:
- Single Exponential Smoothing for trendless demand
- Trigg and Leach's Adaptive Smoothing for automatic dynamic selection of the smoothing constant
- Double Exponential Smoothing for trending demand
- Winter's Exponential Smoothing for seasonal demand
- Classic Least Squares Fit for straight line trend projections
- Classic Trend-Seasonal Fit for seasonal demand
- R.G. Brown's Unbiased Least Squares Fit to remove seasonal bias on trend projections
- Unbiased Trend-Seasonal Fit for pure trend-seasonal demand projection.
Inventory policies cover order quantities, classical statistical inventory management policies (including safety stock calculations), and optimal inventory management policies (inclduing stock-out penalty factor calculations). The program will also calculate forecast for the coming 12 months, and calculate optimal inventory.
