The accuracy of demand forecast models as a critical factor in the financial performance of the food industry/ A acuracidade dos modelos de previsao de demanda como fator critico para o desempenho financeiro na industria de alimentos

Every organization needs to balance their production capacities with their demands. The role of demand forecasting is to provide subsidies for the organization's strategic planning. This process allows administrators to anticipate the future and plan their actions more conveniently. However, it is not enough has a system of demand forecasting. It is the quality information obtained by this system which enables the organization to achieve better planning of operations. In this context, this paper presents case study research to: (a) define the quantitative model to forecast demand for greater accuracy and (b) to verify the influence of the accuracy in demand forecasting on the financial performance. This is an ex-post facto descriptive inquiry with a time series in which we made use of historical data from five groups of products from 2004 to 2008. The results suggest that if the company employing the ARIMA model for groups A, B and E, the Holt model for group D and Winter model for the C group, revenues could be increased by approximately one million six hundred thousand dollars annually.