Coastal Fuel Oil is a distributor of fuel-oil products in the Northeast. It contracts with shippers for
Question:
Coastal Fuel Oil is a distributor of fuel-oil products in the Northeast. It contracts with shippers for deliveries of home heating oil and distributes product in its own trucks. Since its
storage capacity is limited, and purchasing storage for fuel oil it cannot store itself is expensive, accurate demand forecasts are valuable. Monthly data covering the past 10 years are given in the table below.
a. Develop an appropriate forecast using a moving-average approach.
b. Develop an appropriate forecast using a simple exponential smoothing approach.
c. Develop an appropriate forecast using exponential smoothing with a trend (Holt’s method).
d. Develop an appropriate forecast using exponential smoothing with trend and cyclicality (Holt-Winters method).
e. Which of the four forecasts developed above would you recommend using?
Statistics for Business and Economics
ISBN: 978-0321826237
12th edition
Authors: James T. McClave, P. George Benson, Terry T Sincich