What censoring means
Observed demand cannot exceed available inventory. When a stocked-out period records three issues, true requests may have been three or more; when it records zero, zero demand is not established. This tool flags the evidence gap and does not invent lost demand.
Next evidence to recover
Look for backorders, unfilled requisitions, emergency purchases, substitutions, cannibalization, downtime calls, request timestamps, and the exact stockout window. If those records are unavailable, preserve the uncertainty and do not present a precise correction.
Limits and common mistakes
A “No” flag is only as trustworthy as the availability record. Period-level flags can hide a mid-period outage. Removing flagged rows also changes the time axis and can corrupt ADI, so repair or explicitly model the history rather than silently dropping periods.