Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 849634, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/849634
Research Article

Combining Diffusion and Grey Models Based on Evolutionary Optimization Algorithms to Forecast Motherboard Shipments

Fu-Kwun Wang,1,2 Yu-Yao Hsiao,2 and Ku-Kuang Chang3

1Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan
2Graduate Institute of Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan
3Department of Logistic Management, Takming University of Science and Technology, Taipei 114, Taiwan

Received 21 February 2012; Revised 12 June 2012; Accepted 15 June 2012

Academic Editor: Yi-Chung Hu

Copyright © 2012 Fu-Kwun Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

It is important for executives to predict the future trends. Otherwise, their companies cannot make profitable decisions and investments. The Bass diffusion model can describe the empirical adoption curve for new products and technological innovations. The Grey model provides short-term forecasts using four data points. This study develops a combined model based on the rolling Grey model (RGM) and the Bass diffusion model to forecast motherboard shipments. In addition, we investigate evolutionary optimization algorithms to determine the optimal parameters. Our results indicate that the combined model using a hybrid algorithm outperforms other methods for the fitting and forecasting processes in terms of mean absolute percentage error.