Сalculation of seasonality index

The development of information technology makes logistics increasingly important. One of the relevant tasks of planning is determination of the seasonality index of products to rationalize inventory stocks, optimize using human, financial and material resources, and so on. The specificity of analyzing the agricultural industry is caused by the following reasons: 1) the results of the agricultural company largely dependent on climatic conditions, so the analysis should be made with due consideration of the some previous years'' data; 2) agriculture industry is characterized by seasonality of production; 3) the process of production in the agricultural industry disagrees with the working period, some parameters can be evaluated only at the end of the year. Thus, such tool for analyzing as the index of seasonality is very relevant. When planning and forecasting, the seasonality index allows minimizing a number of agricultural organizational, technological and economic problems, in particular, minimizing cash outflow of an enterprise caused by excessive stockpiling, that is reasonable if an enterprise can negotiate lower prices with suppliers (since a larger order usually provides some benefits in the form of discounts). For the same reasons, an enterprise prefers to have an adequate supply of finished products that allows managing the production more cost-effective, keeping staff and having the opportunity not to lose customers in the case of a sudden increase in demand. As a result, the enterprise, as a rule, provides a discount to their customers. In addition, a large enough supply of raw and other materials can be useful in the case of unexpected lack of appropriate reserves caused by the termination of the production or purchase of more expensive substitute materials. The objective of the analysis is to find a reasonable balance between profit and stock-holding cost. Calculating the seasonality index with the help of Microsoft Excel allows us to automate the calculations for different types of resources that results in the optimization of management decisions.