In: Finance
The next three questions are based on the following
information.
Sam has a cleaning service. To better allocate his resources, he
would like to forecast his weekly orders based on the order number
he received in the past 13 weeks as shown in the following
table.
Week |
Demand |
Week 1 |
11 |
Week 2 |
14 |
Week 3 |
16 |
Week 4 |
10 |
Week 5 |
15 |
Week 6 |
17 |
Week 7 |
11 |
Week 8 |
14 |
Week 9 |
17 |
Week 10 |
12 |
Week 11 |
14 |
Week 12 |
16 |
Week 13 |
15 |
A) Calculation of Week 14 order using a three week moving average:
-To derive the demand for week 14, we need to calculate the average of demands of week 11, 12 and 13 (Using a three week moving average)
-The three weeks selected (i.e:11,12 and 13) are the latest and hence the best indicators to calculate the demand for week 14.
-Therefore,
14+15+16/3
=15
Hence, the demand for Week 14 is 15 units.
B) Calculation of Week 14 order using a three week weighted moving average:
-To derive the demand for week 14, we need to calculate the weighted average of demands of week 11, 12 and 13 (Using a three week weighted moving average)
-Week 13 being the latest will be assigned a weight of 3.Similarly, week 12 will be assigned a weight of 2 and week 11 will be assigned a weight of 1.
-Therefore,
Week | Demand | Weights | Demand*weight |
11 | 14 | 1 | 14 |
12 | 16 | 2 | 32 |
13 | 15 | 3 | 45 |
6 | 91 |
Therefore, weighted average demand=Demand*weight/weights
=91/6
=15.17 units
Hence the demand using the weighted moving average approach is 15.17 units.
C) MAD is an acronym of mean absolute deviation. It is the deviation of a population from its average (mean) in absolute terms. Therefore, lesser the deviation from the mean, the more accurate the population is.
In the above case, MAD for moving average is 4.17 and for weighted moving average is 2.38. Hence, the forecast using the weighted moving average is more accurate as compared to moving average since its deviation from the mean is lesser.