A method for uncertain sales forecast by using triangular fuzzy numbers

Abstract

This work provides a tool to assess, from sales forecasts obtained by experts, the degree to which the sales forecast of a company is a specific value. It proposes different possibilities of triangular fuzzy number assignment whose vertices are obtained by aggregation functions that act on experts' forecast sales. The method offers too the option that the entrepreneurs or business owners remove or mitigate extreme values based in his personal opinion, thus enabling them to provide knowledge of the company not known to experts. With the possibility of allowing the entrepreneurs or business owners to incorporate or not extreme values, it opens the way to allow them to finally decide the characteristic function of the sales forecast, making the prediction an absolutely personal estimate. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.