Industries that sell products with short-term or seasonal life cycles must regularly introduce new products. Forecasting the demand for New Product Introduction (NPI) can be challenging due to the fluctuations of many factors such as trend, seasonality, or other external and unpredictable phenomena (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). Traditionally, NPI is an expertcentric process. This paper presents a study on automating the forecast of NPI demands using statistical Machine Learning (namely, Gradient Boosting and XGBoost). We show how to overcome shortcomings of the traditional data preparation that underpins the manual process. Moreover, we illustrate the role of cross-validation techniques for the hyper-parameter tuning and the validation of the models. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that statistical Machine Learning can forecast NPI demand better than experts.

Supporting an Expert-centric Process of New Product Introduction With Statistical Machine Learning

S. Zahmatkesh;A. Bernardo;E. Falzone;E. Della Valle
2021-01-01

Abstract

Industries that sell products with short-term or seasonal life cycles must regularly introduce new products. Forecasting the demand for New Product Introduction (NPI) can be challenging due to the fluctuations of many factors such as trend, seasonality, or other external and unpredictable phenomena (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). Traditionally, NPI is an expertcentric process. This paper presents a study on automating the forecast of NPI demands using statistical Machine Learning (namely, Gradient Boosting and XGBoost). We show how to overcome shortcomings of the traditional data preparation that underpins the manual process. Moreover, we illustrate the role of cross-validation techniques for the hyper-parameter tuning and the validation of the models. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that statistical Machine Learning can forecast NPI demand better than experts.
2021
Enterprise Knowledge and Data Spaces
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
57-Conference paper-1103-1-10-20210702.pdf

accesso aperto

: Publisher’s version
Dimensione 1.19 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
1.19 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11311/1180284
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 1
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 0
social impact