Greetings and Compliments of 2019!

To start with, in the field of Forecasting it’s hard to speak of “Standard” because any Forecasting is driven by the parameters which you will be dealing with and most specifically the type of Supply Chain you are involved with. A popular tool used for Medicines and which l have used in practice for Nutrition commodities as well is Quantimed by USAID. However many other Forecasting techniques are available, which l said wholly depends on the Supply Chain you want to deal with.

In the last part you mention about minimizing losses and avoiding stock-outs. This is entirely solved by Inventory Management Policies which again depend on the type of Supply Chain you are dealing with. For instance an inventory management policy will define for you “ How much to Order and When to Order” taking base figures from your Forecasting. Popular policies include the Economic Order Quantity- EOQ, Base Policy, Order Review Policy R,S. All depending on the situation which will be on the ground at implementation.

I feel the matter you have asked here is an interesting one for the Nutrition field and can ensure effective and efficient Supply Chains for delivering Nutrition commodities ie Malnutrition commodities, Vitamins, Food Aid etc. Feel free to reach out would you need finer explanations @ vadubewg@gmail.com

Hello Anonymous 3049,

You may be interested to take a look to the CMAM planning tool by FANTA II . The tool works on various assumptions based on primary data you need to fill. You can customize few parameters to accomodate local specifics ( currency, distance estimation, etc).

Mahaman

Hello Mahaman,

The FANTA II CMAM costing tool might not be a great tool for dealing with the Forecasting and Inventory Management ie Logistics/Supply Chain problems raised there.

Best