Patent ID: 8768790

Claim:
A system for forecasting the future supply chain needs of a plurality of individual products within a product family, the system comprising: a data storage device storing at least a current composite product mix, wherein the current composite product mix comprises percentages for the plurality of individual products within the product family; a computer processor configured to: receive a first parameter a and a second parameter β for the product family, receive the current composite product mix P k,t for product k at a time t, a current demand mix D k,t for product k at time t, and a current inventory mix I k,t for product k at time t, the mixes being associated with the product family, and generate a new composite product mix P k,t+1 for product k at time t+1 according to: P k,t+1 =β(α D k,t +(1−α) I k,t )+(1−β) P k,t , wherein: β represents a weighting smoothing factor which is a real number equal to or between 0 and 1 indicating a level of weight to be applied to the current demand mix and the current inventory mix; α represents a confidence smoothing factor which is a real number equal to or between 0 and 1 indicating a confidence level in the current demand mix or the current inventory mix; and a display in connection with the computer processor for communicating the new composite product mix.