A Web-Based System for Fashion Sales Forecasting

The fashion industry faces more challenges from demand uncertainty than many other businesses because it creates products that are highly seasonal with short lifetimes and demand is inherently volatile. Such a situation introduces difficulties in fashion supply chain management. The solution to the agile supply chain involves setting up seamless or boundary-less connections between supply chain members. These connections can minimize buffers between the different stages in the chain. In an agile network, such connection is critical and can be enabled by web-software, allowing different actors to be connected without needing to have the same computer system. With integrated web systems, businesses in different geographical locations can behave as if they belong to the same enterprise. The forecasting of future sales is one of the key constituents of these solutions. Today’s enterprises in fashion often employ various IT services in supply chain operationsand a forecasting system is often expected to be accessible by independent users and systems through a standardized interface. Therefore, web-software is the right solution in this circumstance. There are many methods in the sales forecasting field. In this paper, we focus on exploring the implementation of a web-based forecasting system in which various forecasting methods can be utilized. This web-based forecasting system is expected to bring great flexibility into fashion enterprise operations and enhance their supply chain management. A case analysis is presented in the paper in which a neural network is utilized as the forecasting method. We believe that the implementation mechanism is highly applicable to help fashion companies in improving their operations.