Managers require good forecasts of economic indicators for financial planning and making sound decisions. Economic indicators may include sales, consumer behavior, demographics, interest rates, and inflation. Qualitative and judgmental techniques rely on managerial experience and intuition. Please choose a forecasting technique you may be familiar with and describe/discuss a specific managerial application or scenario for its use.

Decision optimization is the process of selecting values of decision variables that minimize or maximize some quantity of interest and is an important tool for prescriptive analytics. Optimization models have been used in operations and supply chains, finance, marketing, and other disciplines for many years to help managers efficiently allocate resources and make cost-effective, profitable decisions. Build a specific example of a linear optimization model, discussing/describing the basic steps in its development.