A. Synopsis
Yankee Fork and Hoe is a leading producer of garden tools which is a mature, cost sensitive market. Currently the firm is falling behind on on-time deliveries. This is due to the lack of utilizing a good forecasting method. Alan Roberts, the president of Yankee Fork and Hoe, has hired a consultant to look into the reasons why orders are not being fulfilled on time. Sharon Place, the consultant, was directed to the Bow Rake product line, for this is where many of the complaint stem from.
B. Purpose
The purpose for this case is to examine the forecasting methods of Yankee Fork and Rake or lack thereof. Analysis of the current system in place will provide a solutions to the problems of poor forecasting methods and orders not being delivered on time.
C. Analysis
Yankee Fork and Hoe face some major issues in production forecasting and communication between departments. Communication is the key factor leading to the problems in forecasting and production.
In the current system the marketing department sends down an inflated forecast to the production department, and to lessen the blow of inventory costs, the production department reduce the forecast by 10%. There is no coordination between the two therefore, the firm is trying to fix past problems by inflating forecasts, instead of forecasting future demand. I recommend that Yankee Fork and Hoe Company use the multiplicative seasonal method in forecasting their monthly demand. Using a seasonal pattern of one month the year 5 forecast is shown below.
Justification: Using this method the range of the totals are 5 less than the OM Explorer calculation, thus this prediction is accurate and should be used.
D. Recommendations
I recommend that the firm forecast across the organization. While forecasts usually come from the marketing department, all leaders need to be involved in the forecasting process. Consensus meetings can solve this. These meeting will give the production team and others the data they need to prepare schedules and manage work flows. I also recommend that Yankee Fork and Hoe take a quantitative approach to forecasting and use the aforementioned multiplicative seasonal method to properly forecast customer demand. In conclusion, forecasting is not an exact science, however, using historical data to forecast demand is far more reliable that of the judgement approaches currently being used.
E. Reference
Krajewski, L. J., Malhotra, M. K., & Ritzman, L. P. (2013). Project Management. In Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
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