Measuring Forecast Accuracy in a Pharmacy
Read this article where forecasting approaches, along with a hybrid forecasting method are covered. What types of data can a company use in quantitative forecasts?
Materials and Methods
Data Presentation
Twelve (12) historical monthly sales figures from January, 2017 to December, 2017 were collected from the sales records of the chosen retail Pharmacy as presented in table 1. The three forecasting methods (moving averages, smoothing constant and least cost method) were used to determine sales forecasts from January, 2018 to December, 2018. The performance of the forecasting methods was evaluated with forecast accuracy measures (MAD, MAPE and MSE).
Table 1. 12 month's sales figures of Pharmacy
| Month (x) | Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual sales (y) (million) | 25 | 29 | 28 | 35 | 32 | 36 | 41 | 45 | 20 | 23 | 15 |