Design and development of a forecasting interface and dynamic sales dashboard for enhanced inventory management

Effective inventory management primarily relies on precise demand forecasting, an essential yet challenging aspect for companies pursuing operational excellence. This paper outlines the design and implementation of a forecasting interface integrated with a sales dashboard to enhance demand prediction accuracy and inventory decision-making. The interface incorporates four established forecasting techniques—Naïve, Moving Average, Weighted Moving Average, and Exponential Smoothing—to systematically address demand fluctuations. Created in Excel and automated with VBA, it provides reorder points, safety stock levels, and forecasted demand, along with other distinctly user-friendly inputs and outputs. In addition, a dynamic sales dashboard has been developed with visual features representing historical and projected demand, sales distribution by products and regions which further facilitate detailed analysis and informed inventory management decisions. This study outlines the interface and dashboard development process along with important codes. It also highlights the practical implications of integrating technical forecasting methods with intuitive visualization tools to enhance inventory management substantially. The forecasting interface and sales dashboard were further verified and validated through different scenarios including: high demand in season peaks, managing with variation in lead time issues, and forecasting in case of launching new product.