Book Review: Intermittent Demand Forecasting: Context, Methods and Applications

I've never been a fan of forecasting approaches to intermittent de- mand. With intermittent demand — or other situations (like new products) where we have little hope of reasonably accurate forecasts — my thinking is “why bother with trying to forecast?”. But just because we can’t expect to solve a business problem with forecasting, it doesn’t mean there is no solution. It just means we need to find a different approach. This same kind of mindset — this openness to look beyond just throwing more sophisticated models at a problem — is displayed in the new book Intermittent Demand Forecasting: Content, Methods and Applications by John Boylan and Aris Syntetos.