Setting up demand forecasts

Related Articles The entire prediction mechanism is Demand forecasting (AI) Monthly overview is Demand calendar Visualization of accuracy is Prediction Accuracy Dashboard See below. This article describes the settings screen for administrators/sales planning. For daily operations, other articles will suffice.

What you can do on this screen

The demand forecast settings are the fundamental settings screen of the demand forecasting system. There is only one settings record in the entire system, and it manages the following four elements together.

• ICS Hub Integration: Importing external calendars (Rakuten SALE / year-end gift information, etc.)
• Lead Time Setting: Standard number of days for manufacturing/shipping/raw material procurement
• Prophet Demand Forecast: Enable long-term forecasts (default 90 days ahead) and target product groups.
• EC Demand Forecasting: Enabling and tuning short-term forecasts for e-commerce channels.

Screen URL:/app/demand-intelligence-settings

Use it in these situations

• Rewrite the ICS Hub URL for production use during initial deployment.
• Enable Prophet Demand Forecasting (default is disabled)
• Set a company-wide standard lead time for manufacturing, shipping, and raw material procurement.
• Adjust the Automatic Tuning Threshold (MAPE) of e-commerce forecasts to match your company's actual situation.
• Narrow down the product group to be predicted.

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Overall view of the screen

The screen is divided into four sections. Some fields are displayed conditionally, so checking the box will automatically reveal related items.

#	Section	Role
1	ICS Hub Integration	External Calendar URL & Automatic Synchronization Settings
2	Lead Time Setting	Standard days for manufacturing/shipping/raw material procurement
3	Prophet Demand Forecasting	Enabling Long-Term Forecasts and Target Product Groups
4	E-commerce Demand Forecasting	Short-term forecasting and automated tuning for e-commerce channels

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Section 1: ICS Hub Integration

Import external ICS calendar feeds (Rakuten SALE / year-end gifts, etc.), Demand calendar These are the settings to apply them.

Item	Content	Default Value
ICS Hub URL	Destination URL	http://localhost:8000/calendar/demand-events.ics
Automatic Sync	Enable Periodic Import	Disable
Synchronization interval (time)	Automatic synchronization interval	24
Last Sync Date and Time	Most Recent Sync Time (Automatically Recorded)	—
Last Sync Event Count	Most Recent Retrieval Count (Automatically Recorded)	—

• The "Sync Interval" is only displayed when "Automatic Sync" is turned ON.
• Initial valuelocalhost The URL needs to be rewritten in the production environment.

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Section 2: Lead Time Settings

Lead times for manufacturing, shipping, and raw material procurement will be specified company-wide. Order progress board This value is used as the default when creating purchase requisitions.

Item	Content	Default Value
Manufacturing lead time (days)	Standard number of days required for manufacturing	3
Shipping Lead Time (Days)	Standard Number of Days Required for Shipping	2
Raw material procurement lead time (days)	Standard number of days required for raw material procurement	7
Alert advance notification days	Timing of issuing a warning when the deadline is approaching	3

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Section 3: Prophet Demand Forecasting

This controls long-term forecasting (default 90 days ahead) using Meta's Prophet library.

Item	Content	Default Value
Enable Prophet forecasts	Turn long-term forecasts ON/OFF	Disable
Forecast Period (Days)	How many days ahead should the forecast be?	90
Product group to predict	Product group to run the prediction on	—

• The following two items will not be displayed unless "Enable Prophet predictions" is turned ON.
• Initial activation may take several minutes to several tens of minutes to complete.

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Section 4: E-commerce Demand Forecasting

We control short-term forecasts for e-commerce channels (Rakuten/Amazon/Yahoo!, etc.) independently of Prophet.

Item	Content	Default Value
Enable EC forecast	Turn EC short-term forecast ON/OFF	Disable
Forecast Period (Days)	How many days into the future should the forecast extend?	14
Minimum training data points	Minimum number of data points required to start training	14
Auto-tuning threshold (%)	MAPE threshold for detecting accuracy degradation	30

• The following three items will not be displayed unless "Enable EC forecasting" is turned ON.
• Items that exceed the threshold Prediction Accuracy Dashboard This will make it eligible for automatic tuning.

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Main Operations

1. Initial Setup

1. Open the screen (administrator privileges required)
2. Rewrite the ICS Hub URL to the production URL.
3. Turn on Automatic Sync and set the sync interval to 24 hours.
4. Adjust lead time to suit your company's actual situation (e.g., manufacturing 5 days / shipping 1 day / procurement 14 days)
5. Enable Prophet Forecast and specify the product group to forecast.
6. Enable EC Forecast (only if you have an EC channel)
7. Save

2. Annual update (beginning of April)

1. Check if the ICS URL has changed.
2. The results of the automatic tuning in the previous fiscal year Prediction Accuracy Dashboard Looking back
3. Adjust if lead time deviates from actual results.

3. How to deal with a decrease in accuracy

1. Prediction Accuracy Dashboard Identifying items with high accuracy (MAPE) 2. Lower the automatic tuning threshold and increase the retuning frequency (e.g., 30% → 20%). 3. Increase the minimum number of training data points to improve learning stability. 4. Observe the situation for two weeks and re-evaluate.

4. Narrow down the product group to limit the prediction target.

1. Specify the target group in "Product Group for Prediction".
2. Only items under the relevant group will be included in Prophet's learning process.
3. Removing unnecessary, low-frequency items reduces computation costs.

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Linked screens

Linked to	Role
Demand calendar	Display events retrieved from ICS hub URL
Prediction Accuracy Dashboard	Determine which items exceeding the threshold should be targeted for automatic tuning
Order Hub Forecast Mode	Raw Data for EC Demand Forecasts
Purchase requisition / Manufacturing order	Reference for lead time days
Product Group Master	Selection of Product Groups to Forecast

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authority

Role	Permissions
System Administrator	Create, delete, email, print, read, share, write (all possible)
Demo Viewer	Email, Read, Share
Demo Operator	Email, Output, Print, Read, Share

This does not apply to regular sales users or manufacturing managers. The permission system is designed with administrators in mind. Although this article is placed under the sales team, actual operation is typically handled by administrators.

Setting Pitfall: If custom permissions are added to this screen, the standard permission settings will be overwritten, and only the roles on the custom permission side will be active. In the demo environment, this is why even system administrators may encounter an issue where the screen is "not found". To resolve this, add the roles required for the custom permissions (Demo User Role / System Manager in the demo), clear the cache, and reload the page.

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Dependent Prerequisites

• Product Group Master (Required as a selection for the product group to be predicted)
• ICS Hub Server (External feed or internal Flask server)
• Prophet (Python package, installable via conda/pip)
• Scheduler (Execution platform for automatic synchronization and automatic tuning)

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Points to note in the demo environment

• Often remains at its default value (ICS URL islocalhost (Prophet/EC forecast is disabled)
• Before deploying to production, be sure to review all four sections.
• After activating Prophet, the initial training will take several minutes to several tens of minutes.
• Be careful of overriding permissions with custom permissions (see "Setting Pitfalls" in the "Permissions" section).

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Tips for Use

• Operate with default settings for the first 2-3 months: Wait for the automatic tuning to learn.
• Change one parameter at a time: Changing multiple parameters simultaneously makes it difficult to pinpoint the cause.
• Make it a habit to compare before and after changes using the accuracy dashboard.
• ICS URL must be HTTPS: Only HTTPS is recommended according to company regulations.
• Synchronize in moderation: Synchronizing about once a day is sufficient.

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FAQ

Q: Can I directly edit the detailed parameters of Prophet?

You cannot directly edit these settings on this screen. Prophet's internal parameters are automatically adjusted by the auto-tuning function. If you want to manually set fixed values, you will need to request that the development team implement them.

Q: When will the settings changes take effect?

The changes will be reflected immediately, but they will not affect currently running predicted jobs (they will take effect from the next execution). Changes to the automatic synchronization settings will be reflected the next time the scheduler is started.

Q: How do I view the change history?

You can view the automatically accumulated change history from the version timeline (⏱ icon) in the upper right corner of the screen.

Q: What is the ICS hub URL?localhost What if we continue using it as is?

If your company's Flask server is running on the same hostlocalhost It works correctly. However, for demo environments and production settings, we recommend using an HTTPS endpoint on your internal network.

Q: Should this screen be moved to the administrator menu?

While the content is geared towards administrators, the sales planning team is often the primary operator, so for now, it's placed under the sales team and clearly labeled as "for advanced users."

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Next Steps

• After setting up, view monthly overview → Demand calendar
• Review accuracy at the end of the month → Prediction Accuracy Dashboard
• The entire prediction mechanism → Demand forecasting (AI)
• Input in predictive mode → Order Hub Prediction mode