Forecasting Impact

Polly Mitchell-Guthrie is the VP of Industry Outreach and Thought Leadership at Kinaxis.

In this episode, Polly talks to us about the collaboration between the academic and business worlds. She tackles topics such as possible synergies, building trustful cooperation and proper forecasting communication. She also shares with us the forecasters' ABCs rule.

Trevor Sidery is a Lead Data Scientist at Tesco PLC. In this episode, Trevor unveils the mystery of how astrophysics and fluid dynamics studies leads to forecasting.

Trevor discusses the forecasting process within a large retail company, and which business component models are predicting and how models are selected. He elaborates on best practices on scaling forecasting models on large amount of time series.

Jim Hoover is a clinical professor and Director of Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Center at the Warrington School of Business, University of Florida. 

In this episode, Jim shares some of his experiences in the US Navy where he worked in several decision-making roles and used forecasting/operation research tools for over two decades. 

Jim emphasises the importance of open source software development and calls for academic cooperation on building an open access platform for sharing the best forecasting practices with industry practitioners and SMEs. He also shares his thoughts on bridging the gaps between industry and academia.

Jim recommends Forecasting Principles and Practices by Rob Hyndman and George Athanasopoulos as a great textbook for forecasters. 

 Our next guest is Len Tashman, Professor Emeritus of business administration at the University of Vermont, US. He is the founding and continuing editor of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting.

Len tells us how the “Foresight” journal was established in 2005, the main idea behind it, and how it is going now. This journal provides up-to-date research for practitioners and forecasters, and it has an impressive background story. 

Len highly recommends a prominent book by Daniel Kahneman “Thinking, Fast and Slow” as well as a new book released by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment”.

Jennifer Castle is an Economics Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford University and a research fellow at Climate Econometrics, Oxford University.

Jennifer talks about economic forecasting models and the role of structural breaks (e.g., Covid pandemic) in forecasting. We also discuss climate change and how it can be forecasted using econometric tools and scenario analysis.

Jennifer recommends two books Fortune Tellers by Walter Friedman and The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, and one paper-book chapter, 'Towards a Theory of Economic Forecasting', In Hargreaves, C. (Ed.) (1994), Non-stationary Time-series Analysis and Cointegration, with M.P. Clements.

Evangelos Spiliotis is a Research Fellow at the Forecasting and Strategy Unit, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He co-organised the M4 and M5 Forecasting Competitions and is an organiser of the M6 competition.

Evangelos talks about his research directions, highlighting the role of machine learning algorithms in time series forecasting within current business processes. He also discusses the M competitions which have been organized by Professor Spyros Makridakis and Evangelos for the last several years. The M6 competition, a competition on forecasts of stock price (returns) and risk, is live now and will be finalised in February 2023.

Evangelos recommends Forecasting: Principles and Practice (3rd ed) by Rob J Hyndman and George Athanasopoulos and Practical Time Series Forecasting with R: A Hands-On Guide by Galit Shmueli and Kenneth C. Lichtendahl Jr.

He also recommends the following papers: Forecasting: Theory and Practice by Petropoulos et al., Retail forecasting: Research and Practice by Fildes, Ma and Kolassa, and the special International Journal of Forecasting issues on the M competitions. 

Our next guest is Paul Goodwin, Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath, United Kingdom.

Paul is a fantastic speaker, well-known for his research in judgemental forecasting, and author of numerous books. This conversation developed into several exciting tracks. We discussed uncertainty and human perception, a combination of statistical models (especially in spreadsheets) and judgments, and their use in the current forecasting software.

Paul recommends Principles of Business Forecasting by Keith Ord, Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes. 

This episode’s guest is Elaine Deschamps, Executive Director of the Washington State Caseload Forecast Council, an independent state agency. Elaine has spent 25 years in public service, previously as Senior Fiscal Analyst for the Washington State Senate Ways and Means Committee, in charge of the low-income health care and public health budgets.

Elaine explains how public service forecasting works and the role of judgment and scenario planning in policy settings. Also, we talk a bit about a “new normal” in the Covid era and the challenges it imposes on forecasters.

Elaine recommends “Foresight” Guidebooks, especially “Improving Your Forecasting Process”, “Forecasting Methods Tutorials”, and “Forecast Accuracy Measurement: Pitfalls to Avoid and Practices to Adopt”.

Our next guests are John Boylan, Professor and Director of Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting (CMAF) at Lancaster University (UK), and Aris Syntetos, Professor of Operational Research and Operations Management at Cardiff University.

John and Aris have recently published a book titled “Intermittent Demand Forecasting: Context, Methods and Applications”, a book aimed at practitioners and early career researchers which summarises everything known about intermittent demand forecasting up to date. In this episode, we introduce this book and then talk about good practices for research and industry collaborations.

John recommends “Inventory and Production Management in Supply Chains” by E. Silver, D. Pyke, D. Thomas, and Aris talks about “Statistical forecasting for inventory control” and “Smoothing, Forecasting and Prediction of Discrete Time Series” by Robert Goodell Brown.

This episode’s guest is Dr. Anne Robinson, Chief Strategy Officer at Kinaxis. Anne is a thought leader in the field of analytics and digital transformation, with expertise in operations, supply chain and strategy.

In this episode, Anne talks about her career path from academia to the customer and software vendor experience. We also discuss the role of trust and analytical and soft skills that are key to success in the field. What are the crucial components of agile planning, forecasting and supply chain management? Anne shares her vision and ideas, enjoy!