1. Demand Forecasting for Dynamics AX
Thank you for the opportunity to meet you today and to introduce Adaptable Solutions and Microsoft’s premier ERP software product Dynamics AX.
Our objective today is to gain a good understanding of what you require for your companies:
What are the key issues
Your point of difference
Timeframe
Budget
Anything else you regard as important

2. Fully integrated AX module
Demand Forecasting
Demand
forecasts
Sales orders
Transfer
orders
Purchase
Production
Master Planning
Total integration – enter information once!!

3. Key features
Forecasts can be calculated automatically or entered manually
Graphical view for comparison of forecasts and demand history
Adjust forecasts either online, or offline using Excel
Full support for key Dynamics AX item dimensions
Designed to manage large volumes of data
Built within AX using X++ development language

4. Release 4.0 - New Features Weekly forecasting
Multiple demand sources, including dependent demand
Collaborative forecasting (consolidation of adjustments made offline by multiple people)
Generation of budgets from forecasts
Flexible OLAP reporting to compare demand history, forecasts and sales budgets with user-defined groupings of customers & items over multiple levels

5. Forecasts can be automatically calculated or manually entered
Items are grouped for ease of maintenance
Customers are grouped to consolidate demand and improve forecast accuracy
Forecast at any dimension level

6. Forecasting and Item Dimensions
The Item Dimension ‘levels’ at which forecasts are
generated are configurable. Here is an example:
The level at which forecasts are automatically calculated or manually entered
Sales Invoices
Demand Forecast Calculation
Final Demand Forecast
Item 
Site
Warehouse
Configuration
Colour
Size
The level at which forecasts are required by Master Planning
In this case, the final forecast is pro-rated from the calculated forecast based on demand history ratios

7. Collaborative Forecasting
Forecast Sales Groups specify who manages forecasts for each customer
Forecasts can be adjusted online, or offline using Excel

8. Forecast Item Groups Forecasts are always calculated by item
Forecast Item Groups consolidate data
For viewing
Adjustments may be made at group level
Adjustments are pro-rated down to items

9. Abnormal Demand Ability to flag abnormal demand
For example an abnormally large order is received from a customer to stock stores for a sale
You want to adjust the demand history to prevent future forecasts being inflated
Manual adjustments are always held separately from actual demand history

10. Promotions
Ability to enter the likely impact of promotions for forward planning
A promotion may drive up sales in a period, but reduce sales in a subsequent period
Promotional adjustments are held separately from calculated forecasts

11. Product Life Cycle Start of Life
Copy history from a similar or superseded item
End of life
Manually determine when the run-out should occur
Disable item from being forecast
Copy history to a new item

12. Forecasting Formulae Same as last year’s demand +/- n%
n-month moving average
n-month moving average with trend
Average of same months last 2 years
Average of same months last 2 years with trend
‘Best fit’ formula selection using the Forecast Pro forecasting engine

13. Forecast Pro Formulae Simple Moving Averages Discrete Data Models
Croston’s Intermittent Demand Model
9 Exponential Smoothing Models
Univariate Box-Jenkins Model
Event Models
4 Curve Fitting Models
Dynamic Multiple Regression

14. Other Features Forecast periods Forecast accuracy
Forecasts are calculated by week, month or user-definable periods
Monthly forecasts can be automatically split into weekly forecasts (or even further if required) using period keys
Forecast accuracy
Multiple forecast models enable a forecast to be frozen and compared to actual demand over the forecast period
Fully multi-lingual capable
English language labels are shipped with the product
Other language labels to be developed by resellers

15. Demand Forecasting Roadmap
Display of total item forecasts over all customer groups
User selection of Forecast Pro formulae
Forecast exception tracking
Automatic detection of abnormal demand history
Extensions to collaborative forecasting to track who made changes
Extensions to the OLAP cube
Description of each point:
The module currently displays item forecasts by Forecast Customer Group and, optionally, Forecast Sales Group. We will be providing a summary enquiry screen showing item forecasts totalled over these groups for information purposes only initially.
Demand history adjustments must currently be entered manually – this will provide a detection of abnormal demand history, or ‘Outliers’, together with recommended adjustments that can be easily confirmed or rejected.
Currently only the latest forecast figures are displayed even if they have been altered multiple times by different people. With collaborative forecasting especially, this can be a problem where, for example, a figure altered by a sales rep is overridden by a manager. This will provided visibility of all adjustments made to forecasts and who made them.
We currently provide access to the advanced formulae used by the Forecast Pro engine only under the ‘Optimised’ formula option. The formulae options will be extended to enable selection of individual formulae.
There are industry-standard formulae for calculating safety stocks based on demand variability, forecast accuracy and lead time variability. We have been requested to include such calculations in the module. The AX Safety Stock Journal technically provides this but there are problems with it and it doesn’t include calculation based on forecast accuracy.
OLAP extensions are inevitable and will include MAPE calculations based on selected Forecast Models (currently only available for the current model).

16. Demand Forecasting for Dynamics AX
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