Forecasting Sales of Truck Components: A Machine Learning Approach

In this paper, forecasting sales model for truck components using machine learning algorithms is proposed. The forecasting model helps companions (i.e. Volvo Trucks) in the activity of trade and business. It also plays a major role for firms in decision-making operations in the areas corresponding to sales, production, purchasing, finance, and accounting. In order to achieve good forecasting sales mode, firstly, a normalization approach is performed on the time-series data to reduce and eliminate the data redundancy. After that, feature extraction and selection techniques are employed on the normalized data. Finally, different machine learning methods such as Support Vector Machine Regression, Ridge Regression, Gradient Boosting Regression and Random Forest Regression have been applied to the features of the normalized time-series data. Results depict that ridge regression method gives the most promising forecasting sale results of truck components compared to the other machine learning methods.