The "leading-indicator engine" is a methodology/software that identifies products that provide advanced warning for demand changes for a product group. The core technique is a statistical method known as the "leading indicator search algorithm" that examines the demand pattern of a given group of products and identify "leading indicators" in the group that demonstrate demand patterns that predict the pattern for the entire group. This algorithm identifies a set of leading indicators and ranks them by,
The leading indicator methodology not only produces demand forecasts for the product group, it can be used to improve the accuracy of an existing forecasting method as well. The leading-indicator method provides a new perspective on demand forecasting, which has significant implications to capacity planning levels for short life-cycle technology products. The "leading-indicator engine" methodology/software can also be extended to other corporate planning functions such as financial forecasting and inventory forecasting.
Identify "leading indicators" for a product group, which provide advanced warning for demand changes. Additionally, providing a methodology that can be applied to any existing demand forecasting method to improve its forecasting accuracy
A US utility patent application has been filed.