Focus forecasting reconsidered

Focus Forecasting is a popular heuristic methodology for production and inventory control although there has never been a rigorous test of accuracy using real time series. We compare Focus Forecasting to damped-trend, seasonal exponential smoothing using five time series of cookware demand in a production planning application. We also make comparisons using 91 time series from the M-Competition study of forecast accuracy. Exponential smoothing was more accurate in both cases.