Case Scenario: Boulevard Industries

Bulevard Industries has decided to provide safety training to its 1,500+ employees who work in the Boulevard main office. Part of its training is a 60-minute presentation by a member of the Boulevard human resources (HR) department and is held in a conference room at the main office building. Boulevard plans to complete this process by holding five sessions a day on Thursday (Th) and Fridays (F) each week for the next 4 months. During the first week of sessions, the HR department recorded the following information concerning attendance.

Session Day Time Attendance Forecast Actual Attendance
1 Th 9 a. m. 10 13
2 Th 11 a. m. 10 10
3 Th 2 p. m. 10 12
4 Th 3 p. m. 8 12
5 Th 4 p. m. 7 8
6 F 9 a. m. 10 11
7 F 11 a. m. 10 9
8 F 2 p. m. 10 9
9 F 3 p. m. 8 4
10 F 4 p. m. 7 7
Questions

1. During this first week of sessions, what was the mean error of the HR department's forecasts (ME)? What was the mean absolute deviation (MAD)? What was the mean absolute percent error (MAPE)?

2. Assume that the HR department's forecast for the Thursday 9 a. m. session was 10, as shown in the table. If HR had used simple exponential smoothing with an alha (a) of 0.2 to forecast the remainder of the sessions that week, what would the forecast for the Friday 9 a. m. session have been?

3. Someone in HR noticed that overall attendance on Friday was somewhat less than on Thursday and believes this pattern will continue. Calculate the two seasonal relatives that express this fluctuation, based on this data.

4. Using your answer from question 3, how many people would you forecast to attend next Friday's sessions, if a totall of 100 people were forecast to attend all 10 sessions next week?