
In the 1960s, my ex-wife’s father set safety stock levels and order quantities for Pep Boys. He used part sales rates and the Wilson square-root formula to set order quantities.

Why not use the ages of the cars into which those parts go, to forecast part sales and recommend stock levels? Imagine you had vehicle counts (year, make, model, and engine) in the neighborhoods of parts stores, catalogs of which parts and how many go into which cars, and store sales by part number.
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