Demand forecasting for apparel manufacturers by using neuro-fuzzy techniques

Purpose – According to literature research and conversations with apparel manufacturers' specialists, there is not any common analytic method for demand forecasting in apparel industry and to the authors' knowledge, there is not adequate number of study in literature to forecast the demand with adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for apparel manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is constructing an effective demand forecasting system for apparel manufacturers. Design/methodology/approach – The ANFIS is used forecasting the demand for apparel manufacturers. Findings – The results of the proposed study showed that an ANFIS-based demand forecasting system can help apparel manufacturers to forecast demand accurately, effectively and simply. Originality/value – ANFIS is a new technique for demand forecasting, combines the learning capability of the neural networks and the generalization capability of the fuzzy logic. In this study, the demand is forecasted in terms of apparel manufacturers by using ANFIS. The input and output criteria are determined based on apparel manufacturers' requirements and via literature research and the forecasting horizon is about one month. The study includes the real-life application of the proposed system, and the proposed system is tested by using real demand values for apparel manufacturers.