Note from the Editor
With our 43rd issue, Foresight welcomes new Associate Editor Chris Gray, who joins longtime Associate Editor Stephan Kolassa as the main guardians of quality assurance in Foresight publications.
Chris is President of Gray Research, a founder of Partners for Excellence and a founder of Worldwide Excellence Partners (WWXP), a global confederation of independent experts devoted to sharing knowledge and experiences on proven, profitable management processes. He has authored or coauthored six books, written dozens of articles and software evaluations, and run numerous seminars and workshops covering S&OP, demand planning, MRP, enterprise software, lean manufacturing and other supply chain issues. Chris is a past President of the North Shore chapter of APICS and was certified as a Fellow (CFPIM) by APICS in 1980.
His three books in the 1980s, including MRP II Standard System, A Handbook for Manufacturing Software Survival (which he coauthored with Darryl Landvater), have defined the standards for resource planning software. He also developed and taught the MRP II Software Survival Course, a class covering software evaluation and selection, software trends, and the role of systems people in implementing effective systems. In 2006, Chris and fellow Partner of Excellence John Dougherty published Sales & Operations Planning—Best Practices, a book based on their examination of planning practices in 13 companies around the world that became a highly influential text on S&OP. In one of two reviews in Foresight’s Winter 2009 issue, John Mello wrote, “Showing how S&OP really has made a difference in the corporate world is what sets this book apart from those that merely describe how S&OP works, or is supposed to work.” Chris and wife Leah and their Jack Russell terrier, Kodiak Jack, live in Stratham, New Hampshire. They split their time between seacoast New England and the Emerald Coast of Florida.
Stephan Kolassa’s day job at SAP AG in Switzerland is Research Expert, responsible for statistical and time series forecasting of SKU/store level data in the retail sector, as well as price optimization, assortment planning, and replenishment. Stephan is a member and current Secretary of the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Forecasters, publisher of Foresight. He is a prolific contributor of methodological research to a range of scholarly journals.
In his spare time, he has authored or coauthored nearly a dozen articles and commentaries for Foresight covering forecast accuracy metrics, benchmarking, simplicity in modeling, and forecasting support systems. As Associate Editor he has reviewed and edited more than 50 invited and submitted articles.
Stephan and coauthor Enno Siemsen’s new book, Demand Forecasting for Managers, has just been published by Business Expert Press and will be reviewed in Foresight’s Winter 2017 issue. The book is intended as an introduction to forecasting for the non-expert, such as a manager overseeing a forecasting group or an MBA student.
Stephan and family, including 7-year-old twins Sophie and Philipp, live in Ulm, Germany. When he is not commuting between Germany and Switzerland, Stephan enjoys reading, playing the piano, and providing inferential statistics consulting to his wife Iris’s psychology PhD students.
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