A comparison of focus forecasting with averaging and exponential smoothing

Focus forecasting is used in inventory management; the approach selects a method from variety of models to produce the next period forecast. The average technique studied here is the result of a forecasting competition among academics; it uses an average of the strategies to make the next period forecasts. When both methods are compared with a simple exponential smoothing model, rankings from results with synthetic and empirical data are markedly different.