A business demand based control system and method stores past business demand data during past time intervals for use with other data to compute business demands in such manner that the past business demand data is used to project the business demands in current and near-future time intervals. The system measures and stores the business demand data for a plurality of time intervals and a plurality of products or tasks, and projects the business demand for a plurality of products or tasks for near-future time intervals using percentage based demand curves. The system allows the creation of a number of demand curves for the items to determine near future demand, using defined functions and variables. Business demand projections for current and near-future time intervals are revised for a plurality of business items in response to variances in actual business demand data in time intervals just prior to the current time interval.
RELATED APPLICATION
This application is a continuation in part of the previously filed application Ser. No. 07/808,982, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,115 issued Mar. 29, 1994, filed on Dec. 17, 1991, by Randall K. Fields, Paul R. Quinn and Barrie R. Tondevoid, entitled PRODUCT DEMAND SYSTEM AND METHOD which was a file wrapper continuation application of Ser. No. 07/406,069, now abandoned, filed on Sep. 12, 1989 inventor Fields, et. al., entitled PRODUCT DEMAND SYSTEM AND METHOD.
A scheduling system is disclosed for scheduling tasks for fulfilling a series of service requests. When each service request is received, a determination is made as to the amount of resources a task requires to provide the requested service. Further, a preferred time within which to perform the task is obtained from the requestor of the service request. For each service request, data for the estimated amount of resources and the preferred time are supplied, on a first-come-first-serve basis, to a scheduling component for solving a combinatorial optimization model which efficiently allocates a predetermined amount of resources for each time slot in a scheduling period by rearranging tasks for service requests previously received. The scheduling component provides for a service requestor, without regard to subsequently received service requests, a service time in which to perform the task for the requested service substantially immediately after the service request is made. Whenever possible, the service time coincides with the preferred time. Each previously received service request will have its related task performed within the service time provided to the requestor of the service request. The scheduling system is particularly useful in scheduling technician time for service calls received by customer representatives in the telecommunication and utility industries.
A method of forecasting the demand for ambulance services based upon a determination from the historical record of the number of currently active calls at the time each new call is received. The method may utilize records of specific calls history including the time each call was received and the time each call was completed, or it may use information on the number of calls received each hour to simulate specific calls history. The method may be extended to a "third dimension" to better account for the effect of service demands and staffing levels in preceding hours. The method has application to other services having the characteristics of limited available service resources, randomly occurring service requests but historically-repeating levels of demand, and relatively long service times.
A method and apparatus, using a computer model, to control a manufacturing or distribution process, which determines a demand forecast by using an optimized historical weighting factor, determines an upper and a lower bound of a planned inventory by explicitly accounting for the customer order lead time, and computes a production schedule at predetermined intervals to maintain an actual inventory between the upper and lower bounds of the planned inventory.
A business operation management system has a data bank which includes a rule database for registering data relative to rules of how to proceed with work, including data relative to business operation management manuals prescribed with respect to respective themes including business plans and new product development plans, a project management database for registering management data relative to details of each of the themes, a change management database for registering contents of changes in the management data, a problem management database for registering data indicative of rejected confirmed results, a technical report management database for registering solutions to problems and data indicative of accepted confirmed results, a reference classification management database for registering instruction contents, and a know-how management database for registering know-hows extracted from problems and confirmed results.
A method of forecasting having the steps of extracting a number of computer usage records and storing the computer usage records in a records file (102). The computer usage records are then sorted according to date (104). The computer usage records are summarized within a number of date ranges to form a usage summarization record (106). A curve fitting model is applied to the usage summarization record to predict a computer usage trend curve (108). A computer usage forecast is then input (110). A computer usage growth curve is based on the computer usage forecast (112). The computer usage trend curve and the computer usage growth curve are displayed (114).
