The Journal of Business Forecasting recently published an article by First Analytics’ titled “The Promise of Generative AI in Forecast Value Added Analysis.” The article explores the potential of integrating generative AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), into Forecast Value…
In the fourth quarter of 2024 First Analytics, contributed to a number of events and publications. In the spirit of sharing insights with industry professionals and practitioners, we point to some of them here. Forecasting We published an article in…
In 2022, we published a blog post titled "It Will Take Days to Recover from Even a Single-Day Rail Strike," which highlighted the impact that a rail strike can have on a railroad network, and therefore, supply chains, businesses, and…
With severe weather making recent headlines almost daily, we thought it would be a good time to discuss how weather can be incorporated into analytical and machine learning models. Weather conditions can significantly impact business operations, and understanding these impacts…
The Spring 2023 edition of the Journal of Business Forecasting features an article co-authored by First Analytics and The Hershey Company. It shows compelling accuracy results by focusing on some novel hierarchical forecasting methods. From the abstract: Forecasting is traditionally…
First Analytics will be co-presenting with Land-O-Lakes at the upcoming Institute of Business Forecasting Predictive Analytics and Forecasting conference. The event will be held in New Orleans, April 25th through 27th, 2023. We will discuss a model that has its…
We have previously written about the perils of third-party data in forecasting. The notion that more data helps improve forecasting is true in principle, albeit in practice it can make things worse. An article published in the fourth quarter 2022…
As of Monday, November 21st, 2022, the prospects of averting a nationwide rail strike appear to be grim. The Federal government intervened in September, avoiding a strike at that time. But there was a sense that this was just "kicking…
Many have touted the inclusion of data from outside the firm as a way to improve forecast accuracy. The idea is that, with the incorporation of more information to explain the demand signal, forecasts are bound to be better. In…
After many months of angst about rapidly rising commodity prices, indications are that they are coming back down. This presents an opportunity for a data-driven business that uses advanced analytics. Though there is pain in operating a supply chain under…