A decision support system methodology for forecasting of time series based on soft computing

Exponential procedures are widely used as forecasting techniques for inventory control and business planning. A number of modifications to the generalized exponential smoothing (Holt–Winters) approach to forecasting univariate time series is presented, which have been adapted into a tool for decision support systems. This methodology unifies the phases of estimation and model selection into just one optimization framework which permits the identification of robust solutions. This procedure may provide forecasts from different versions of exponential smoothing by fitting the updated formulas of Holt–Winters and selects the best method using a fuzzy multicriteria approach. The elements of the set of local minima of the non-linear programming problems allow us to build the membership functions of the conflicting objectives. It is compared to other forecasting methods on the 111 series from the M-competition. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.