A switching based forecasting approach for forecasting sales data in supply chains

Forecasting future demand has been a challenging task for supply chain practitioners, which is further exacerbated due to the recent pandemic effects. While the literature suggests a potential for improved accuracy with ML/AI approaches compared to probabilistic distribution-based traditional forecasting methods, the extent of this enhancement may vary based on the specific case. It is recognized that traditional probabilistic forecasting approaches are often considered less accurate and may lead to errors, potentially influencing the estimation of overall business costs. Meanwhile, with the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, such as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), this misestimation of cost can be reduced by forecasting demand more accurately from historical data. Consequently, this paper applies several AI-based approaches to predict demand data. Since no fixed AI approach works best for all datasets, a switching-based forecasting approach (SBFA) is proposed to exploit the merit of different advanced ML/DL approaches for different days ahead of prediction. Based on the performance of validation data, the proposed system automatically switches between different approaches to determine a more appropriate forecasting approach. A two-echelon supply chain model with different attributes is developed to validate the proposed SBFA against a few traditional forecasting approaches. The reorder points of this supply chain model are calculated based on the predictions from conventional/ML/DL forecasting approaches. Predictions from SBFA and other approaches are analysed by calculating overall supply chain cost. Based on overall supply chain costs under static and dynamic lead time settings, the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed SBFA against traditional forecasting approaches are demonstrated.