Patent ID: 6978249

Claim:
A product demand forecasting system, comprising a profile extractor that generates a demand profile of a new product yet to be introduced based on demand profiles of similar products already introduced, wherein the profile extractor normalizes and averages the demand profiles of the similar products to obtain the demand profile of the new product; a life-cycle demand predictor that generates a total life-cycle demand of the new product based on historical demand data of the similar products; a forecast creator coupled to the profile extractor and the demand predictor to generate a life-cycle demand forecast for the new product based on the demand profile and total life-cycle demand of the new product; and a future demand extrapolation module coupled to the forecast creator to extrapolate the total life-cycle demand of the new product by calculating an average demand per time period of each of the similar products, associating each average demand per time period with a date that represents a midpoint of the life-cycle of each similar product, and calculating an estimate of the average demand per time period at the date of the midpoint of the life-cycle of the new product.