Decision pattern

Demand Forecasting

Demand forecasting estimates future demand from historical signals and known events; it becomes operationally useful when its assumptions feed a staffing, capacity, inventory, or production decision.

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Use this when

Forecasts are useful only when they flow into staffing, production, inventory, or capacity decisions. Many teams forecast in one sheet and plan manually in another.

Inputs

historical demand, known events and assumptions, forecast horizon, service or delivery target.

Constraints

Forecast horizon, Capacity conversion rules, Service level target, Inventory or staffing limits, Scenario assumptions.

Decision output

demand scenarios, capacity requirement, planning assumptions, decision-ready forecast.

A small example

A forecast is produced, then someone manually estimates staffing or production needs from it. The decision process makes the rules explicit, then compares feasible options against the stated objective: Translate forecasted demand into the lowest-cost feasible plan that still meets service or delivery targets.

Date	Item or role	Baseline demand	Event uplift	Forecast	Capacity need
Monday	Server hours	80	10	90	12 shifts
Tuesday	Product A	420	0	420	3 batches
Wednesday	Product B	300	75	375	2 lines

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