1. I worked as a supply chain consultant before coming back to academia to be a faculty. The company I worked before has 3 software to improve operations management. One is about Demand Forecasting, another is about Inventory Management and the third is about Transportation Planning Our clients are all big names including P&G, Unilever, Kraft Food, Kimberly-Clark, Shell and Campbell Soup. When every client decides to implement our solution, it always first chose to use Demand Forecasting product instead of the other two products. We all know Inventory Management and Transportation Planning are very critical to make those clients successful. Then why nobody first tries Inventory Management or Transportation Planning and then Demand Forecasting? Why all these big companies focus to improve their demand forecast first? Please think and explain for this phenomenon. 2. When a new business is started, or a patent idea needs funding, venture capitalists or investment bankers will want to see a business plan that includes forecast information related to a profit and loss statement. What type of forecasting information do you suppose would be required. We should always use historical demand data instead of sales data to make the forecast, why? How can we collect or have a better estimation of historical demand