Suppose you are given the following customer arrival history at your hospital: Month Customer arrival (Dt) Forecast
Question:
Suppose you are given the following customer arrival history at your hospital: Month Customer arrival (Dt) Forecast 800 740 WN 810 790 780
1. Use a three-month moving average to forecast customer arrivals for month 5 will be? Forecast for month 5 is 780 customer arrivals
2. If the actual number of arrivals in month 5 is 805, what is the forecast for month 6, based on three- month moving average method? Forecast for month 6 is 802 customer arrivals
3. Forecast error is simply the difference found by subtracting the forecast from actual demand for a given period, or, Et =Dt - Ft. Given the three-month moving average forecast for month 5, and the number of patients that actually arrived (805), what is the forecast error?
4. Let W1 = 0.50 (for the most recent period), W2 = 0.30, and W3 = 0.20 (the furthest period). Use the weighted moving average method to forecast arrivals for month 5. Also, given the number of patients that actually arrived (805), what is the forecast error? Forecast error for month 5 is 19
5. Using the Exponential Smoothing method, let smoothing constant a=0.2, and first month forecast F1=800 (i.e., the same as actual D1), what would be the forecast for month 5? Forecast for month 5 is 802 customer arrivals