Patent ID: 7225140
Filing Date: 2007-05-29
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of forecasting future orders of parts for products to be sold to customers, comprising the steps of: determining a time-course record of orders with respect to each part and extracting low-order-rate parts whose order records show an order rate to have fallen below a predetermined level; determining from each such order record at least one parameter indicating a characteristic of orders after the order rate fell below the predetermined level, classifying the extracted low-order-rate parts into multiple categories and using the parameter indicating the characteristic of orders to calculate for each of the multiple categories an order occurrence probability distribution; carrying out Monte Carlo simulation based on the calculated order occurrence probability distributions to determine occurrence rate probability distributions of number of orders during a predetermined period; and forecasting future number of orders of the low-order-rate parts based on the calculated occurrence rate probability distributions of number of orders during the predetermined period and outputting the future number of orders of the low-order rate parts, wherein the parameter indicating the characteristic of orders is a ratio of number of orders, such that the number of orders occurred after orders were non-existent for a fixed time divided by the number of orders immediately before the orders were non-existent for the fixed time.