How Faribault Foods Navigated Demand Volatility with Smarter Forecasting
COVID-19 exposed how quickly demand patterns can break from history. For shelf-stable food manufacturers like Faribault Foods, pantry loading, stockouts, capacity constraints, and shifting consumer behavior made traditional forecasting methods harder to trust.
In this recorded webinar, New Horizon and Faribault Foods discuss how planning teams can forecast through disruption, adjust abnormal demand history, identify the “new normal,” and build more agile planning processes for future uncertainty. You’ll hear how Faribault Foods used New Horizon to manage pandemic-driven volatility and improve forecast accuracy after major demand swings.
What You’ll Learn
- How COVID-19 changed demand patterns for shelf-stable food categories
- Why pandemic sales spikes and stockouts need to be treated as forecast outliers
- How Faribault Foods adjusted historical demand to create more reliable future forecasts
- When to use moving averages, seasonal history, interpolation, or manual overrides
- How segmentation helps planners prioritize high-volume and high-impact items
- Five steps organizations can take to build a more agile supply chain
About the Speakers
Chao-Ming Ying, Ph.D.
Co-founder & CTO, New Horizon
Chao-Ming Ying has over 25 years of experience in supply chain planning and has led more than 100 implementations across demand planning, supply planning, inventory planning, S&OP, and multi-echelon inventory optimization. As co-founder of New Horizon, he focuses on helping organizations use AI and machine learning to improve planning accuracy, agility, and decision-making.
Bill Kaley
Director of Demand Planning and Forecasting, Faribault Foods
Bill Kaley leads demand planning and forecasting at Faribault Foods, a shelf-stable food manufacturer with national distribution across branded, private label, and co-pack products. He played a key role in building Faribault Foods’ demand management and S&OP processes and helped the company navigate significant demand disruption during COVID-19.
Plan through disruption with more confidence.
See how AI-driven planning can help your team adjust faster, improve forecast accuracy, and prepare for whatever demand does next.