1. What information has Piotr collected and how useful is it? What other information does he need?

2. How can Piotr forecast future workloads in the purchasing department? How reliable are the results? Do they suggest any patterns of workload?

3. What are the implications of Piotr's work, and what should he do now?

Maria Castigliani is head of the purchasing department of Ambrosiana Merceti, a medium-sized construction company. One morning she walked into the office and said, 'The main problem in this office is lack of planning. I have read a few articles about planning, and it seems that forecasting is the key to an efficient business. We have never done any forecasting, but simply rely on experience to guess our future workload. I think we should start using exponential smoothing and then we can foresee problems and schedule our time more efficiently.'