Company A Product Demand Forecasting And Master Production Schedule

The fierce competition in the market brings the enterprise both opportunities and challenges. The MTS (Make To Stock) enterprises are asked to shorten delivery time, reduce cost and improve service level, which requires the ability of scientific forecast and quick response to meet the uncertain demand. As for the MTS enterprises, accurate demand forecasting and efficient Master Production Schedule (MPS) plays an important role in shortening delivery time, reducing operating cost and improving customer service level.This thesis studies the improvement programs in demand forecasting and MPS aiming at the existing problems for A company-a MTS manufacturing enterprise. Firstly, the production characteristics of A company under multi-distribution-center and multi-plant are described, and then the current status of demand forecasting and MPS are analyzed, and the basic thoughts in improving demand forecasting and MPS are proposed. The 4-months Simple Moving Average Method is introduced as the demand forecasting model of A company, the "de-seasonal" forecast method based on seasonal index is proposed to deal with the sales data of seasonality products, and the process of demand forecasting and approval is re-engineered. After that, a method of allocating the total demand plan to each distribution location according to the previous shipment percentage is analyzed, the making of distribution requirement planning and the sourcing relation between distribution locations and plants are studied. Thus, the basic information used in making MPS is obtained. Then, the making and evaluation of MPS of plants is studied. Finally, the results obtained from the implementation of the improvements were discussed regarding the accuracy of demand forecasting, improvements on the inventory for both raw materials and finished goods as well as the complete order fulfillment, and the problems existed are also analyzed.This study is helpful to improve the accuracy of demand forecasting, reduce inventory cost, and increase the product delivery rate at schedule. Meanwhile, the approach proposed in this thesis is also useful for other MTS enterprises.