As you can see in the following table, demand for heart transplant surgery at Washington General Hospital has increased steadily in the past few years:
|
Year
|
Heart Transplant
|
|
1
|
45
|
|
2
|
50
|
|
3
|
52
|
|
4
|
56
|
|
5
|
58
|
|
6
|
?
|
The director of medical services predicted 6 years ago that demand in year 1 would be 41 surgeries.
1. Use exponential smoothing, first with a smoothing constant of 0.6 and then with one of 0.9, to develop forecasts for years 2 through 6.
2. Use a 3- year moving average to forecast demand in years 4, 5, and 6.
3. Use the trend- projection method to forecast demand in years 1 through 6.
4. With MAD as the criterion, which of the four forecasting methods is best?