Patent ID: 7457766

Claim:
A method to determine daily weight values, each daily weight value representing the percentage a day of a week contributes to the weekly sales for said product, said method comprising the steps of: acquiring historical daily demand data for said product for a period of at least one regular week, said regular week including seven consecutive regular business days; for each day of said regular week, calculating a daily weight value for said product by dividing the historical daily demand for a corresponding day of said regular week by a total of said historical daily demands for all seven days of said regular week; acquiring historical daily demand data for said product for an additional regular week, said additional regular week including seven consecutive regular business days; for each day of said additional regular week, calculating a new daily weight value for said product by dividing the historical daily demand for a corresponding day of said additional regular week by a total of said historical daily demands for all seven days of said additional regular week; and blending said new daily weight values with said first daily weight values to determine updated daily weight values for each weekday in accordance with the following equation: updated daily weight value=(1−A)*prior-calculated daily weight value+A*new daily weight value, wherein A comprises a predetermined adaptive factor that establishes the proportion of said new daily weight values and said prior-calculated daily weight values that are blended.