Phase-out product demand forecasting

1. A machine readable medium having instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations comprising:

retrieving data about a phased-out product from a storage system;

retrieving a group phase-out profile associated with the phased-out product the group phase-out profile generated by sorting a plurality of phased-out products into groups and aggregating a phase-out profile for each group member; and

forecasting demand for the phased-out product based on the group phase-out profile and retrieved data;

updating the data about the phased-out product; and

forecasting an updated demand for the phased-out product based on the group phase-out profile and updated data.

2. The machine readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising:

determining a group for the phased-out product.

3. The machine readable medium of claim 2 , further comprising:

forecasting demand for the group.

4. The machine readable medium of claim 1 , wherein retrieving data comprises:

retrieving a standard deviation value for the phased-out product.

5. The machine readable medium of claim 3 , further comprising:

calculating a demand forecast range for a time period using the standard deviation value.

6. The machine readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising:

generating a phase-out profile associated with the phased-out product.

7. A machine readable medium having instructions stored therein which when executed cause a machine to perform a set of operations comprising:

retrieving data about a phased-out product from a storage system;

retrieving a group phase-out profile associated with the phased-out product the group phase-out profile generated by sorting a plurality of phased-out products into groups and aggregating a phase-out profile for each group member; and

forecasting demand for the phased-out product based on the group phase-out profile and retrieved data wherein generating the phase-out profile further includes:

determining a product to profile;

evaluating parameters and historical data associated with the product; and

calculating a standard deviation for the historical data.

8. The machine readable medium of claim 7 , further comprising:

determining a group to associate the product with, wherein members of the group share similar traits.

9. The machine readable medium of claim 8 , further comprising:

generating the group phase-out profile.

10. The machine readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the generating the phase-out profile for the group further comprises:

generating a phase-out profile for each member of the group; and

aggregating the phase-out profiles for each member of the group into a single phase-out profile.

11. A method comprising:

generating a group phase-out profile for a phased-out product by aggregating a phase-out profile for the phased-out product with other phase-out profiles from an assigned group;

generating a demand forecast for the product associated with the group phase-out profile; and

wherein generating a phase-out profile for a product that is no longer produced further includes:

determining a product to profile;

evaluating parameters and historical data associated with the product; and

calculating a standard deviation for the historical data.

12. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:

gathering data about the phased-out product after the generating of the demand forecast; and

adjusting the demand forecast based on the data gathered after the generation of the forecast.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the parameters comprise:

an amount of time for which the long-term demand forecast should be generated;

a number indicating a minimum number of products needed for calculating the phase-out profile;

a threshold value indicating the minimum product percentage value for the phase-out profile; and

a number indicating a minimum number of years of history necessary to generate a phase-out profile.

14. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:

applying at least one rule from a set of rules to determine if a phase-out profile for the phased-out product should be generated.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein the set of rules comprises:

determining if:

a phase-out group has been assigned to the product;

a production end date has been assigned to the product;

the production end date is in the future;

the product is a successor product; and

the product is a predecessor product.

16. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:

grouping a set of products that share at least one characteristic into a single phase-out group.

17. The method of claim 11 , wherein generating a demand forecast for the product associated with the phase-out profile further comprises:

retrieving parameters and historical data associated with the product;

applying the values of the phase-out profile to the historical data associated with the product.

18. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:

filtering the plurality of phased-out products prior to the sorting.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the filtering removes any one of ungrouped phased-out products, phased-out products without a production end date, phased-out products with a production end date in the future.