Responsible
- Dr. Matthias Wichmann
- Christoph Meyer
Project Partners
Initial Situation and Problem
On account of abruptly fluctuating commodity prices iron and steel producing companies are confronted with a volatile market environment. Their position between short-term oriented suppliers and long-term oriented buyers complicates reliable forecasts of financial performance figures. In addition to this forecasts are influenced by interdependencies of versatile internal and external influencing variables regarding the company. The operating profit for example depends on price and exchange rate changes as well as the selected input factor combination for iron and steel production. An isolated assessment of individual influencing variables leads to a reduced informative value regarding the behavior of the overall system and requires an integrated view. An approach allowing for an integrated, prompt and sufficiently detailed forecast at maintainable effort is not known.
Objective and Approach
The objective of this project is the development of a forecasting tool fulfilling the requirements mentioned above. Furthermore the tool must provide the means to factor in uncertainties of influencing variables into scenarios. The project is divided in five work packages:
- Assessment and classification of relevant internal and external influencing variables through analyses of production processes, operating profit and economic trends
- Formulation of requirements for an integrated forecasting tool on the basis of identified influencing variables
- Conception of a quantity structure based on activity analysis and a value structure for an integrated forecasting tool
- Implementation and validation of the forecasting tool
- Adjustment of the forecasting tool according to recent developments