Conventionally, for a product accompanied by supplies such as a copy
machine or a printer, the demand figures relating to the supply which
such a main machine consumes have been determined empirically from the
transition of the past sales records of the supply, the trends of the
market, and a sales scheduled figures of the main machine. Therefore, the
forecasted values of the demand figures differ in accordance with the
skills or experiences of individuals carrying out the forecasting, and
necessarily, the accuracy of the forecasted values deteriorates. Further,
a demand forecast method relating to the supplies of a product has not
been realized due to the large number of parameters, the complexity of
calculation, and the difficulty of a systematic approach for solving
problems.In order to overcome the above-described problems, the invention
of the present application forecasts consumption figures of a supply for
outputting an outputted matter in the future, on the basis of inputted
output figures of an outputted matter outputted by a product and sales
figures of the supply.