Henderson, Nicholas Charles2011-04-132011-04-132011-04-13http://hdl.handle.net/10539/9451MBA - WBSVolatility has an impact on the accuracy of forecasting. The Company on which this project report is based firmly believed that the agricultural segment of their packaging manufacturing business was too volatile to forecast. Economic pressures were however forcing this belief to be questioned. This project report examined if forecasting was applicable to the business, what techniques could be used and demonstrated the various techniques using data supplied by the Company. The main finding was that forecasting is applicable. Due to the volatility in the individual product data it was recommended that forecasting be applied at the aggregated family of products level. Adaptive filtering was consistently the most accurate forecasting technique but a combined forecast using the simple average of the various techniques was recommended. This combined forecast produced adequate models but failed to forecast the magnitude of the seasonal peak which is dependent on the climatic conditions experiencedenBusiness forecastingThesis