Abstract: A demand forecasting and production scheduling system and method creates production schedules for various business items describing a forecasted demand for the business items in a number of future time intervals. The system includes a computer managed database of various profiles, including a base profile for each business item, and a number of influence profiles. The profiles describe variations in demand for the business item in a number of time intervals. The base profile describes an underlying level of demand for a business item that is anticipated for the business item absent any influencing factors, such as promotional sales, holidays, weather variations, and the like. The variations in demand for the business item due to such influence factors are stored in the database as influence profiles. The influence profiles may be either standard, percentage, or seasonal.

Abstract: A business demand based control system and method stores past business demand data during past time intervals for use with other data to compute business demands in such manner that the past business demand data is used to project the business demands in current and near-future time intervals. The system measures and stores the business demand data for a plurality of time intervals and a plurality of products or tasks, and projects the business demand for a plurality of products or tasks for near-future time intervals using percentage based demand curves. The system allows the creation of a number of demand curves for the items to determine near future demand, using defined functions and variables. Business demand projections for current and near-future time intervals are revised for a plurality of business items in response to variances in actual business demand data in time intervals just prior to the current time interval.

Abstract: A product-demand production-control system and method stores past-product demand data during past time periods for use with other data to compute product demands in such manner that the past-product demand data is used to estimate the product demands in current and near-future time periods. The system measures and stores the product demand data for a plurality of predetermined time periods and a plurality of products, and preestimates the product demand for a plurality of products for near-future time periods. Product-demand estimates for current and near-future time periods are revised for a plurality of products in response to weighted emphasis or confidence regarding product demand data in time periods just prior to the current time period.

Abstract: A staff scheduling data processing system and method schedules staff and management personnel at locations remote from a central location by applying central location policy to unique remote location data to insure the optimum staff schedule for each remote site. The system and method includes a data base for storing and retrieving information characterizing: central office policy; applicable labor requirements; tasks that need to be performed; skill levels required to perform tasks; resources that may confine or facilitate the scheduling of a task at a given time; relationships between tasks that will alter the placement or movement of a task on a schedule; employees with associated skill levels and priorities and availability; the employee's start-time and stop time, the percentage of an employee's time that it takes to work on a particular task, and the positive or negative slide in relation to the task's completion time by an employee.