Single exponential smoothing method to predict sales multiple products

Activity to predict sales multiple products intended for control of the number of existing stock, so the lack or excess stock can be minimized. When the number of sales can be accurately predicted, then the fulfilment of consumer demand can be cultivated in a timely and co-operation with suppliers maintained properly so that company can avoid losing sales and customers. This study aims to predict sales multiple products (6,877 products) using Single Exponential Smoothing (SES) approach, which is expected to improve the efficiency of the inventory system. Measurement accuracy of prediction in this study using a standard measurement Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), which is the most important criteria in analyzing the accuracy of the prediction. The results showed that the percentage of multi-product prediction accuracy using SES method is high, because the MAPE value obtained is 1.06% with the smoothing parameter α = 0.9.