Of particular importance for demand planning are the so-called “mad bulls,” a term Nestlé uses to characterize highly volatile products with high volume. A mad bull can be a product like Nescafé, which normally sells quite regularly throughout the year, but whose volumes are pushed through trade promotions. A simple statistical calculation is no more useful in generating a demand forecast than the experience of a demand planner for these less predictable items. The only way out is to explain the volatility in the past by annotating the history. Baumgartner and his team rely on the forecast value added (FVA) methodology as their indicator . The FVA describes the degree to which a step in the forecasting process reduces or increases the forecast error.