This study investigates how incorporating relationships among products and brands can improve shipment forecasting for Conagra Brand’s supply chain operations. Accuracy in forecasting in critical for minimizing excess inventory, which increases operating expenses and ties up capital. Conagra estimates that reducing inventory holding time by two to five days could yield approximately $250 million in savings. The company’s current forecasting approach treats each of their lowest level shipment forecasts independently, potentially overlooking important trends such as complementary purchasing behavior and substitution effects. This analysis seeks to optimize forecasts through the performance of hierarchical reconciliation to identify cross-product and cross-brand relationships that can be leveraged to refine their forecasts. This can help Conagra Brands support more informed decision-making across supply chain, marketing, and sales functions and to establish a foundation for using hierarchical forecasting methods to drive operational efficiency and cost savings.
Watch the team present this project at 31:20 in the session recording here.
Keywords: time series forecasting, predictive analytics, clustering, product interdependencies, trace minimization, aggregation, forecast combination, hierarchy, hierarchical reconciliation, residual analysis
Faculty Advisor
Supply Chain
Dr. Jeanette Shutay is currently the President and Chief Data Officer at Shutay Consulting. Jeanette is a strategic research and data science leader with extensive experience building and scaling advanced analytics and data science teams. Her analytical expertise spans across product, sales, marketing, supply chain, and operations. Jeanette also has approximately 10 years of consulting experience working with nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and the federal government. As a consultant, Jeanette focuses on data strategy, research methodology and analysis, as well as campaign and program evaluation. Jeanette is incredibly passionate about nature and wildlife, and she tries to find ways to incorporate her skills to help improve the environment and the lives of all creatures that inhabit the Earth.