Anti Tuberculosis Drugs Demand Forecasting Practice: The Case Of Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Interestingly enough, the use of a structured forecasting process may have significant role on companies’ performance and not only because forecast accuracy increases. Improving forecast accuracy is often considered a necessity because large forecast errors usually negatively affect companies’ operational performance, especially cost and delivery performance. The assessment review report of the EPSA revealed that there was redundant and extended forecasting with high inaccuracy in the procurement of all health commodities including anti TB drugs. The framework structure of this research was designed by the researcher which consists of three categorical variables in which the forecasting practice is the core of the study; adoption of forecasting techniques, the extent of using forecasting in decision making and performance of the forecasting techniques applied by the agency. The research approach applied was a quantitative method. Secondary document review (from HCMIS & routine forecasting and quantification plan of EPSA) was used to gather data for forecast accuracy test. Furthermore, primary data was collected by a structured survey questionnaire designed to a 5 likert scale questions. The purposive sampling technique was used and the total sample size for the survey was 42 for questionnaire and two for document review for five first line anti TB drugs. The data was analyzed by using SPSS and Google sheet. The cronbach’s alpha value was 0.804 for all variables which is greater than 0.70, and hence the study instrument was reliable.
The survey result of the study showed that the use of structured forecasting technique was below average; 2.63 for “Regression” and 2.95 for “Exponential Smoothing” and a construct average value of 3.18 including “Expert Judgment” whose individual practice was above average; 3.63. The forecast accuracy obtained from the retrospective document review confirmed that there was high forecast error when tested by both MAPE and MAD. The agency should revise its forecasting trend and focus on adopting both scientific and judgmental practices to reduce the negative role of forecasting on purchasing cost, inventory handling cost, distribution cost and also to improve delivery performance; order fill rate, on time delivery and delivery as promise. This study presents only forecasting practice of first line anti TB medicines. The agency is governmental procurement agent for procuring more than thousands health commodities and it is very possible to conduct the study by the same methodology for other products including some qualitative tools.
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Keywords
Exponential Smoothing, Expert Judgment, Ethiopian Pharmaceuticals Supply Agency, Mean Absolute Deviation