The actual demand for the patients at Providence Emergency Medical Clinic for the first 6 weeks of this year follows: Week 1: 65 actual number of patients, Week 2: 62 actual number of patients, Week 3: 70 actual number of patients, Week 4: 48 actual number of patients, Week 5: 63 actual number of patients, Week 6: 52 actual number of patients. Clinic administrator Dara Schniederjans wants you to forecast patient demand at the clinic for week 7 by using this data. You decide to use a weighted-moving-average method to find this forecast. Your method uses four actual demand levels, with weights of 0.333 on the present period, 0.25 one period ago, 0.25 two periods ago, and 0.167 three periods ago.
a) what is the value of your forecast?
b) if instead the weights were 20, 15, 15, and 10, respectively, how would the forecast change? Explain why.
c) what if the weights were 0.40, 0.30, 0.20, and 0.10, respectively? Now what is the forecast for week 7?