FOCUS FORECASTING RECONSIDERED

Focus Forecasting is a popular heuristic methodology for production an d inventory control although there has never been a rigorous test of a ccuracy using real time series. We compare Focus Forecasting to damped -trend, seasonal exponential smoothing using five time series of cookw are demand in a production planning application. We also make comparis ons using 91 time series from the M-Competition study of forecast accu racy. Exponential smoothing was more accurate in both cases. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.