Abstract: A method (300) and apparatus (200) perform range based forecasting. The method can include receiving (320) at least one description of an end product to be produced by an entity and a forecast demand range for the end product. The method can include determining (330) at least one intermediate product of the end product, where the intermediate product can represent a sub-component of end product. The method can include determining (340) at least one common intermediate product of the at least one intermediate product, where the at least one common intermediate product can be common to different end products. The method can include sending (350) a supply order request range of values representing at least two request quantity values for one order of one shipment of the common intermediate product.

Abstract: The invention equips a cellular telephone or other communications device with improved voice recognition and command capability. A cellular handset may be equipped with a digital signal processing or other hardware to enhance speech detection and command decoding, but still be relatively constrained in terms of the amount of electronic memory or other storage available on the device, or the processing power or battery life offered by the device. In embodiments, the cellular handset or other device may perform a first-stage decoding of a voice or other command, for instance to perform a voice browsing function over the Internet or a directory. The handset may perform a look-up of the detected command or service against a local memory cache of stored commands, services and models and if a match is found, proceed directly to performing the desired service.

Abstract: In performing speech or voice recognition, a start point (306) is identified (214). The mobile communication device is provided with an automatic voice recognition algorithm. In noisy environments, however, excess noise may cause the automatic voice recognition algorithm to falsely determine that the noise is speech. Including the noise that occurs before the user actually begins speaking substantially reduces the ability of the voice recognition algorithm to correlate the audio signal with a voice template. To eliminate the effect the noise preamble would have if included by the automatic speech algorithm, the mobile communication device is provided with a user interface (210) that allows the user to assert a speech interrupt (220), causing the start point to be reset (222) at the time the speech interrupt becomes active (306), thereby disposing of the noise preamble.