IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/proeco/v170y2015ipap297-309.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Non-stationary demand forecasting by cross-sectional aggregation

Author

Listed:
  • Rostami-Tabar, Bahman
  • Babai, Mohamed Zied
  • Ducq, Yves
  • Syntetos, Aris

Abstract

In this paper the relative effectiveness of top-down (TD) versus bottom-up (BU) approaches is compared for cross-sectionally forecasting aggregate and sub-aggregate demand. We assume that the sub-aggregate demand follows a non-stationary Integrated Moving Average (IMA) process of order one and a Single Exponential Smoothing (SES) procedure is used to extrapolate future requirements. Such demand processes are often encountered in practice and SES is one of the standard estimators used in industry (in addition to being the optimal estimator for an IMA process). Theoretical variances of forecast error are derived for the BU and TD approach in order to contrast the relevant forecasting performances. The theoretical analysis is supported by an extensive numerical investigation at both the aggregate and sub-aggregate level, in addition to empirically validating our findings on a real dataset from a European superstore. The results demonstrate the increased benefit resulting from cross-sectional forecasting in a non-stationary environment than in a stationary one. Valuable insights are offered to demand planners and the paper closes with an agenda for further research in this area.

Suggested Citation

  • Rostami-Tabar, Bahman & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Ducq, Yves & Syntetos, Aris, 2015. "Non-stationary demand forecasting by cross-sectional aggregation," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(PA), pages 297-309.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:170:y:2015:i:pa:p:297-309
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.10.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527315003813
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.10.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H Chen & J E Boylan, 2007. "Use of individual and group seasonal indices in subaggregate demand forecasting," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(12), pages 1660-1671, December.
    2. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    3. Athanasopoulos, George & Ahmed, Roman A. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2009. "Hierarchical forecasts for Australian domestic tourism," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 146-166.
    4. Sbrana, Giacomo & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2013. "Forecasting aggregate demand: Analytical comparison of top-down and bottom-up approaches in a multivariate exponential smoothing framework," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 185-198.
    5. Hau L. Lee & Kut C. So & Christopher S. Tang, 2000. "The Value of Information Sharing in a Two-Level Supply Chain," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(5), pages 626-643, May.
    6. Srinivasan Raghunathan, 2001. "Information Sharing in a Supply Chain: A Note on its Value when Demand Is Nonstationary," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(4), pages 605-610, April.
    7. Hyndman, Rob J. & Ahmed, Roman A. & Athanasopoulos, George & Shang, Han Lin, 2011. "Optimal combination forecasts for hierarchical time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 2579-2589, September.
    8. E. Shlifer & R. W. Wolff, 1979. "Aggregation and Proration in Forecasting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(6), pages 594-603, June.
    9. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    10. Stephen C. Graves & Sean P. Willems, 2000. "Optimizing Strategic Safety Stock Placement in Supply Chains," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 68-83, June.
    11. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B. & Snyder, Ralph D. & Grose, Simone, 2002. "A state space framework for automatic forecasting using exponential smoothing methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 439-454.
    12. Nesim Erkip & Warren H. Hausman & Steven Nahmias, 1990. "Optimal Centralized Ordering Policies in Multi-Echelon Inventory Systems with Correlated Demands," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(3), pages 381-392, March.
    13. Taylor, James W., 2003. "Exponential smoothing with a damped multiplicative trend," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 715-725.
    14. Edwards, John B & Orcutt, Guy H, 1969. "Should Aggregation Prior to Estimation Be the Rule?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(4), pages 409-420, November.
    15. Everette S. Gardner, 1990. "Evaluating Forecast Performance in an Inventory Control System," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(4), pages 490-499, April.
    16. Kevin H. Shang, 2012. "Single-Stage Approximations for Optimal Policies in Serial Inventory Systems with Nonstationary Demand," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 414-422, July.
    17. Gary Mitchell & Meike Niederhausen, 2010. "On Replenishing Items with Seasonal Intermittent Demand," American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, Science Publications, vol. 2(1), pages 90-102, March.
    18. Widiarta, Handik & Viswanathan, S. & Piplani, Rajesh, 2009. "Forecasting aggregate demand: An analytical evaluation of top-down versus bottom-up forecasting in a production planning framework," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 87-94, March.
    19. Bozos, Konstantinos & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, 2011. "Forecasting the value effect of seasoned equity offering announcements," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 214(2), pages 418-427, October.
    20. Dangerfield, Byron J. & Morris, John S., 1992. "Top-down or bottom-up: Aggregate versus disaggregate extrapolations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 233-241, October.
    21. Bijvank, Marco & Vis, Iris F.A., 2011. "Lost-sales inventory theory: A review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 215(1), pages 1-13, November.
    22. Chen, Huijing & Boylan, John E., 2008. "Empirical evidence on individual, group and shrinkage seasonal indices," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 525-534.
    23. Martel, Alain & Diaby, Moustapha & Boctor, Fayez, 1995. "Multiple items procurement under stochastic nonstationary demands," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 74-92, November.
    24. Stephen C. Graves & Sean P. Willems, 2008. "Strategic Inventory Placement in Supply Chains: Nonstationary Demand," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(2), pages 278-287, March.
    25. Zotteri, Giulio & Kalchschmidt, Matteo & Caniato, Federico, 2005. "The impact of aggregation level on forecasting performance," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 479-491, January.
    26. Tunc, Huseyin & Kilic, Onur A. & Tarim, S. Armagan & Eksioglu, Burak, 2011. "The cost of using stationary inventory policies when demand is non-stationary," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 410-415, August.
    27. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Trapero, Juan R., 2014. "Improving forecasting by estimating time series structural components across multiple frequencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 291-302.
    28. Lutkepohl, Helmut, 1984. "Forecasting Contemporaneously Aggregated Vector ARMA Processes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 2(3), pages 201-214, July.
    29. Gardner, Everette Jr., 2006. "Exponential smoothing: The state of the art--Part II," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 637-666.
    30. James T. Treharne & Charles R. Sox, 2002. "Adaptive Inventory Control for Nonstationary Demand and Partial Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(5), pages 607-624, May.
    31. Mohammadipour, Maryam & Boylan, John E., 2012. "Forecast horizon aggregation in integer autoregressive moving average (INARMA) models," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 703-712.
    32. Acar, Yavuz & Gardner, Everette S., 2012. "Forecasting method selection in a global supply chain," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 842-848.
    33. Maryam Mohammadipour & John Boylan & Aris Syntetos, 2012. "The Application of Product-Group Seasonal Indexes to Individual Products," Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, issue 26, pages 20-26, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Amiri-Aref, Mehdi & Klibi, Walid & Babai, M. Zied, 2018. "The multi-sourcing location inventory problem with stochastic demand," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 72-87.
    2. Boylan, John E. & Babai, M. Zied, 2016. "On the performance of overlapping and non-overlapping temporal demand aggregation approaches," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(PA), pages 136-144.
    3. Uddin, Gazi Salah & Tang, Ou & Sahamkhadam, Maziar & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad & Yahya, Muhammad & Cerin, Pontus & Rehme, Jakob, 2021. "Analysis of Forecasting Models in an Electricity Market under Volatility," ADBI Working Papers 1212, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    4. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Forecast reconciliation: A review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 430-456.
    5. Dai, Hongyan & Xiao, Qin & Chen, Songlin & Zhou, Weihua, 2023. "Data-driven demand forecast for O2O operations: An adaptive hierarchical incremental approach," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    6. Puchalsky, Weslly & Ribeiro, Gabriel Trierweiler & da Veiga, Claudimar Pereira & Freire, Roberto Zanetti & Santos Coelho, Leandro dos, 2018. "Agribusiness time series forecasting using Wavelet neural networks and metaheuristic optimization: An analysis of the soybean sack price and perishable products demand," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 174-189.
    7. Sali, Mustapha & Ghrab, Yahya & Chatras, Clément, 2023. "Optimal product aggregation for sales and operations planning in mass customisation context," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    8. Pennings, Clint L.P. & van Dalen, Jan, 2017. "Integrated hierarchical forecasting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(2), pages 412-418.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Babai, Zied & Boylan, John E. & Kolassa, Stephan & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, 2016. "Supply chain forecasting: Theory, practice, their gap and the futureAuthor-Name: Syntetos, Aris A," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 252(1), pages 1-26.
    2. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Panagiotelis, Anastasios, 2024. "Forecast reconciliation: A review," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 430-456.
    3. Sbrana, Giacomo & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2013. "Forecasting aggregate demand: Analytical comparison of top-down and bottom-up approaches in a multivariate exponential smoothing framework," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 185-198.
    4. Moon, Seongmin & Hicks, Christian & Simpson, Andrew, 2012. "The development of a hierarchical forecasting method for predicting spare parts demand in the South Korean Navy—A case study," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 794-802.
    5. Athanasopoulos, George & Ahmed, Roman A. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2009. "Hierarchical forecasts for Australian domestic tourism," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 146-166.
    6. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2018. "Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption," MPRA Paper 91762, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Petropoulos, Fotios & Apiletti, Daniele & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Babai, Mohamed Zied & Barrow, Devon K. & Ben Taieb, Souhaib & Bergmeir, Christoph & Bessa, Ricardo J. & Bijak, Jakub & Boylan, Joh, 2022. "Forecasting: theory and practice," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 705-871.
      • Fotios Petropoulos & Daniele Apiletti & Vassilios Assimakopoulos & Mohamed Zied Babai & Devon K. Barrow & Souhaib Ben Taieb & Christoph Bergmeir & Ricardo J. Bessa & Jakub Bijak & John E. Boylan & Jet, 2020. "Forecasting: theory and practice," Papers 2012.03854, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    8. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2020. "Cross-temporal aggregation: Improving the forecast accuracy of hierarchical electricity consumption," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    9. Hakeem‐Ur Rehman & Guohua Wan & Raza Rafique, 2023. "A hybrid approach with step‐size aggregation to forecasting hierarchical time series," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 176-192, January.
    10. Hyndman, Rob J. & Ahmed, Roman A. & Athanasopoulos, George & Shang, Han Lin, 2011. "Optimal combination forecasts for hierarchical time series," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(9), pages 2579-2589, September.
    11. Han Lin Shang, 2017. "Reconciling Forecasts of Infant Mortality Rates at National and Sub-National Levels: Grouped Time-Series Methods," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 36(1), pages 55-84, February.
    12. A A Syntetos & J E Boylan & S M Disney, 2009. "Forecasting for inventory planning: a 50-year review," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 149-160, May.
    13. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Athanasopoulos, George, 2019. "Cross-temporal coherent forecasts for Australian tourism," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 393-409.
    14. Babai, M. Zied & Ali, Mohammad M. & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, 2012. "Impact of temporal aggregation on stock control performance of intermittent demand estimators: Empirical analysis," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 713-721.
    15. Svetunkov, Ivan & Chen, Huijing & Boylan, John E., 2023. "A new taxonomy for vector exponential smoothing and its application to seasonal time series," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 964-980.
    16. de Kok, Ton & Grob, Christopher & Laumanns, Marco & Minner, Stefan & Rambau, Jörg & Schade, Konrad, 2018. "A typology and literature review on stochastic multi-echelon inventory models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(3), pages 955-983.
    17. Bahman Rostami‐Tabar & M. Zied Babai & Aris Syntetos & Yves Ducq, 2013. "Demand forecasting by temporal aggregation," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(6), pages 479-498, September.
    18. Jeon, Jooyoung & Panagiotelis, Anastasios & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2019. "Probabilistic forecast reconciliation with applications to wind power and electric load," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 279(2), pages 364-379.
    19. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Song, Haiyan & Wu, Doris C., 2011. "The tourism forecasting competition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 822-844.
    20. R Fildes & K Nikolopoulos & S F Crone & A A Syntetos, 2008. "Forecasting and operational research: a review," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(9), pages 1150-1172, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:170:y:2015:i:pa:p:297-309. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.