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Module 6: Forecasting Product Demand Using Time Series Analysis
Keywords: Predictive Analysis, Forecasting, Time Series, Product Demand
Decision-Making Context: There are many reasons to forecast a firm’s future performance. For example, predicting sales dollars may help a company determine its needed manufacturing capacity. Predicting cash flows may help the company decide if it will need a loan or not. At the individual level, an investor might forecast a company’s earnings to evaluate a potential investment.
The goal of this assignment is to forecast sales and earnings for Shoes for Everyone, a fictitious company.
Required: Using Tableau’s forecasting options, forecast product demand for this company from 2025 to 2026.
Data: Assignment 6 DataDownload Assignment 6 Data
The Question We Answer: What will be the monthly demand (in boot sales) for Shoes for Everyone during 2025 through 2027?
Obtain the Data: Open Tableau and connect to Excel file Assignment 6 Data.
Perform Analysis
Analysis Task 1: Plot the Time Series Data
To start the forecast analysis. Click on Sheet 1, double-click Monthly Product Demand from Measure Names, then double-click Month from Tables.
Tableau should default the visualization type to a continuous line chart, but if it did not, you can change it from the Show Me tab. Tableau interacts with dates in two ways, as either “Continuous” or “Discrete”. Regardless of the way Tableau chose to display your dates when you added them to your visualization, you can change the field to the right display quite easily.
From the column shelf, right-click the YEAR(month) pill, and select Month May 2015.
Analysis Task 2: Forecast Future Demand
To expand this line chart to show a Forecast, select Analysis Tab>Forecast>Show Forecast. You can now select from a variety of options to refine this Forecast.
From the marks shelf, change the default mark to Automatic and Circle. The line chart has changed, and Tableau has provided whiskers around each of the forecasted data points.
You can also adjust the amount of time you are forecasting. From the Analysis tab, select Forecast> Forecast Options.
Adjust the Forecast Length to Exactly 3 Years and click OK. As you make changes, you can see how the chart adjusts to provide more data. You can also see the whiskers around the dates extend as you reach further into the future, due to increasing uncertainty about the outcome.
Notice that the labels indicating the month and product demand (either actual or estimated) do not appear by default. To add labels, click Labels in the Marks shelf and add a checkmark next to Show mark labels.
To rename this sheet to “Forecast with Box Plots”, right-click on Sheet 1 and select Rename.
Analysis Task 3: Create a table of Forecast
Tableau does not default to providing the values for the upper and lower prediction levels. Remember Tableau is used primarily for visualizing data. However, when forecasting, it can be useful to see not only the marks for the predicted values but also the upper and lower prediction levels. To see these levels, we need to duplicate our current sheet as a Crosstab. Right-click Forecast with Box Plots and select Duplicate as Crosstab.
You will see a new sheet titled Forecast with Box Plots (2). Rename this sheet to “Forecast crosstab data’.
Click into your new Forecast with Crosstab data sheet to view the crosstab data. If you scroll to the right, you will see the data upper and lower bounds.
Assessment
We have now developed a forecast for future product demand that we can use to plan our operations and sales for future.
Take a screenshot of the forecast graph of product demand, paste it into a Word document named “Assignment 6 submission.docx”, and label the screenshot Figure 1: Forecast Graph of Product Demand.
Take a screenshot of the forecast crosstab data of product demand, paste it into the same Word document and label the screenshot Figure 2: Forecast Crosstab Graph of Product Demand.
Answer the following questions:
What is the forecasted product demand for January 2027?
Which month has the highest forecasted demand?
Which month has a forecast demand of 135.21?
What is the upper prediction bound for April 2026?
What is the lower prediction bound for May 2027?
What does forecasting with crosstab data allow you to see? Why is that precise data important, rather than just a broad trend?
In this assignment, we used a forecast length of 3 years. Why choose 3 years versus a different forecast period (such as 1 year or 5 years)?
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