QUESTION 3 Operations Management in Supply Chain

Study the information provided below and answer all the questions that follow:

As the operations analyst at the Massmart Group, suppose that the Massmart operations in Ghana has requested your help with forecasting the aggregate demand for a particular product sold across the Game stores in Ghana. You have retrieved from the database the sales data of the product over the twelve months of the 2020 fiscal year as shown below.

Year Monthly demand (000 units)

2020

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

750

800

900

920

680

950

1080

742

920

705

1100

820

REQUIRED:

Using the data provided above, answer the following questions (Please note that the values are in 1000s of units):

3.1

Calculate the three-month weighted moving average forecast using weights of 0.6, 0.3, and 0.1 (largest weight applies to the most recent data and smallest to the oldest data) for the period April 2020 to December 2020.

(9 marks)

3.2

Using the forecast calculated in 3.1 above, determine the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the forecast for the period April 2020 to December 2020.

(4 marks)

3.3

Using the forecast calculated in 3.1 above, determine and interpret the mean absolute percent Error (MAPE) of the forecast for the period April 2020 to December 2020.

(7 marks)