Wilkins Analysis Case

1.

Wilkins’s general background

The company in analysis is Wilkin Regulator Company. The company produced high quality products

for the plumbing, municipal waterworks, fire production and irrigation customer markets, ranging from water

pressure reducing valves and backflows preventers to anti-scald shower valves. The general plumbing

customer market represented approximately 50% of its sales revenue, while that number of irrigation

customer market is 25%. Pursuant to Barge - the newly promoted inventory manager at Wilkins plant in

California, the fire protection and municipal waterworks customers have potential growth. Also according to

Barge, there are several factors that might have influences on Wilkins’s business. They include weather factors,

macroeconomics performances, and company’s strategy of pricing, marketing and product innovation.

Currently, the company was having problem with forecasting demand. Its most current forecast

numbers of 2005 quarter I demand for PVBs product Fire valve presented errors. Barge, who was in charge of

carrying out the forecasting task, found the forecast result unreliable. He wanted to change the forecasting

method by using statistical forecasting method instead.

2. Analysis of Wilkins’s current forecasting method

The current forecasting method of Wilkins based on following 2 main processes.

 Process 1: Create a “Forecast Master”. The main goal of this report is to calculate the Average weekly

sales per quarter of each product family. From these figures, Wilkins’s managers forecasted the Average weekly

sales for the next four quarters and multiplied by 13 weeks to get the each quarter’s demand forecast number.

 Process 2: Develop the “Planning Bill” based on data from actual sales history and “Forecast Master”.

The company’s managers calculated the “Raw” figures which represented the previous proportion of each

product line in a product family. Next, they estimate the “Plan Bill” percent, which...