Summary
The Edit Child Forecasts wizard is designed to help you make changes for forecasts across a wide set of items easily, by allowing changes to forecasts at a child level (e.g. below) from where you select.
In normal editing, while you can make top-down and bottom-up forecast changes according to your forecast hierarchy, most of the time the forecast hierarchy is not well-suited to changing forecasts for only a single customer or product group that crosses many parts of your hierarchy. Or you may simply not want to have a top-down forecast in place. This wizard helps with both of those.
So, the Edit Child Forecasts wizard allows you to make this kind of cross-cutting forecast change for a targeted level of your hierarchy, or, for a large chunk of items all at once.
Loading the Wizard
Begin the Edit Child Forecasts Wizard by selecting the hierarchy node or hierarchy level that has the items under it that you want to edit. The easiest way to do this is in the hierarchy tree. Select your node, that select the "Edit Child Forecasts" option from the Edit window.
Step 1: Select Hierarchy Level
When you load the wizard, StockIQ will list the levels you have in your forecast hierarchy. Choose the level at which you want to make your changes. Often this will be your bottom level, especially if you are doing customer or hybrid forecasting.
Step 2: Select the matches you want to modify
Based on the hierarchy level you specify, StockIQ will show you a list of matching values, such as your customer groups, product groups, etc. Use the checkbox column to select the one(s) for which you want to make changes.
Step 3: Select the matching Hierarchy Nodes
Based on your selections from step 1 and 2, you next will select the specific hierarchy nodes that match your selected level and filters -- combos that you want to make an edit for. As before, you can use the checkbox in the column header to select all visible rows. Make your selections and click next.
TIP: Here is the best place to make additional filter adjustments in the grid column filters, such as filtering on the ABC code if you only want to make adjustments to "A" items, or perhaps on the Order Policy, if you only want to adjust forecasts for Order Point or Lot for Lot items, etc. Once you apply a filter to the grid, the "Select All" checkbox in the column header applies ONLY to the rows visible in the grid, so it becomes an easy way to filter on a criteria and then select all matches.
Step 4: Make your Adjustments
This is the screen where you actually enter the adjustment(s) that you want to make. The simplest approach is to make a single-value percent adjustment up or down (e.g. -25), with a sensible end date and then click "Next" - see image below. For more detail on more complex adjustments, continue reading.
IMPORTANT: The adjustment you are making is to whatever your CURRENT forecast values are, not some previous arbitrary starting point in the past.
Single vs Multi-Value: Represents if you are entering a single adjustment, such as a percent adjustment, or multiple percent adjustments across the different dates in your time series. If you select 'Multi-Value', then you will be given a grid in which you can enter your values for adjustment.
Adjustment Type: Allows you to select what is the nature of your adjustment:
- Percent Adjustment: Allows you to provide a percent adjustment up or down on whatever current baseline forecast exists. Note if an item/site-fg has a 0 forecast, any percent change to 0 is still zero. Enter this as a number, e.g. 10 for 10%, not .10.
- IMPORTANT: The number you type in is the percent adjustment, (e.g. 25 = 25% increase), NOT the % of your existing forecast.
- Unit Adjustment: Provides a unit adjustment up or down. The unit adjustment that you type in is spread among the items you selected in Step 2 by a fair-share distribution, based on the history of the item. Note this means that if an item/site/fg combo has no demand history, it will not get any of the fair-share weight applied to its forecast.
- Units: Allows you to set a number of units requested for the items you selected in step 2. Rather than starting from the existing baseline, these units are split according to fair share and then assigned.
IMPORTANT: If none of the items you have selected have any history upon which to calculate fair share weights, then StockIQ will simply divide your unit adjustment or units among the items evenly.
Optionally, you can enter notes and also start and end dates for your adjustments, in case you don't want to adjust your entire forecast horizon.
Step 5: Preview
Step 5 allows you to preview what all of the changes your inputs will look like, so you can go back and make any changes as required. The Forcast Preview is shown as a bright purple line on your normal summary chart. You can preview as many forecast changes as you like.
NOTE: For customers with larger data sets > 75,000 SKUs, or if you selected a hierarchy node with several thousand nodes, this preview can take a bit of time to run, so be patient.
Click next and StockIQ will begin to apply your changes.
Step 6: Apply
StockIQ will begin to apply your changes, and when complete, you can close the window. The forecast changes will take place immediately, and modify your replenishment suggestions right away.
Next Steps & Undo
The effect of these changes is that each hierarchy node you select will have its forecast overridden and your change made for that forecast individually - you are not making a global top-down change. This means that each one of your modified items will now have its own forecast override, and its own forecast settings override. If your selected nodes are not bottom-level in your forecast hierarchy, they will apply their forecast in a middle-down fashion to their children.
This means that there is no one-step way to "undo" these changes, but you have three options:
- To restore an item to its default setup, e.g. where it is using the statistical forecast and default forecast settings, load it in Forecast Manager, click the "Forecast Settings" tab, and click the Delete button. This will delete the forecast settings override, and return it to defaults, restoring the auto forecast.
- If you want to make additional/different changes, you can simply run the wizard again, and type in your new adjustments.
- If you want restore some or all of the items to auto-forecasting en-masse, you can run the wizard, and put an end date of your current period (e.g. 2020/04/01 if you are in April of 2020), and those items will revert to auto forecasting immediately. Note they will still have their own forecast settings overrides that they likely did not have before, but they will now be auto forecasting again.
Troubleshooting
TIP: For your first use of this wizard, you may want to start with a relatively small group or selection, to make sure you like and understand the effects
TIP: While you can select the very top level of your hierarchy to make item-site-forecast-group level changes for ALL items in your warehouses, this may take too long to execute if you have a large number of SKUs. We recommend doing individual product groups/families at least one step down in your forecast hierarchy from the top.
Tags/Metadata
Keywords: Forecast Disaggregation, Mass Forecast Changes, Bulk Forecast Adjustment