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Sponsored by
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MANAGER'S MANUAL  August 2003
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Forecasting
It's not as scary as you think. The keys are stability and information.
by Judy Ferring
When EJ Hewitt, Toledo, Ohio-based global supply manager for business travel at Pilkington plc, was asked to produce a five-year forecast of the company’s travel needs, her first reaction was disbelief. Pilkington, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of glass and glazing products, employs more than 25,000 people, has offices on five continents and sells in 130 countries. The company’s engineers work on projects all over the world; that involves a variable number of travelers and trips. “The duration of the trips can be all over the map,” says Hewitt, “and if they shelve the project, your forecasting is going to be wrong. And besides that, you’re at the mercy of whatever the airlines are doing.”
Despite her skepticism, Hewitt’s boss says he now has a useful forecast of Pilkington’s travel demand. The project has not been impossible, perhaps not even as difficult as she’d feared. Capitalizing on elements of the travel program that can be kept stable, it is delivering benefits that travel management skeptics would not expect of an exercise so closely associated with the purchasing of manufacturing material.
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