How Many SKUs A Forecaster Can Manage?

How MANy SKUS A ForeCASter CAN MANAge? By Chaman L. Jain How much error a company can afford depends on the cycle time and the cost of error … how many SKUs a forecaster can handle depends on at what level forecasts are prepared, among other things … forecaster should pay the most attention to products that are most important to business and difficult to forecast. H H ow many SKUs a forecaster can manage efficiently and effectively depends on how much forecast error a company can afford; how difficult and easy is to forecast; at what level of aggregation forecasts are prepared; whether or not any criterion is used to allocate time to different SKUs; and the type of technology available to gather and analyze data, and generate forecasts. error toLerANCe The larger the error a company can afford, the larger the number of SKUs a forecaster can handle, and vice versa. How much error a company can tolerate varies from industry to industry, and company to company. Basically, it depends on two things: One is the cycle time (or adjustment capability of a company, i.e., how quickly a company can adjust to an error). The shorter the cycle time, the more quickly a company can adjust ...