The Quantitative Supply Chain

When starting Lokad back in 2008, we thought we had the solution already all worked out. However, since those early days, there have been many twists and turns along the road, and we have had to change the entire strategy of the company on a large number of occasions.

Here we're joined by the host of IBF’s On Demand Podcast, Eric Wilson, to discuss the role of analytics in modern day organisations and in particular, what we can learn from Eric’s new book titled ‘Predictive Analytics for Business Forecasting’.

Better quantitative results in supply chains are frequently obtained through better qualitative, if not highly subjective, perspectives rather than from better numerical methods. Most the breakthroughs, that ultimately lead to quantitative improvements, of Lokad were of a qualitative nature.

Scenario planning was first pioneered by Shell in the 1970’s and since then has been promoted by consultancies worldwide as a powerful tool to help companies prepare for every eventuality. Here, we discuss the effectiveness of this approach and whether it can be replaced by alternative methods, such as probabilistic forecasting.

Despite the rise of automation, modern day warehouses still rely heavily on manpower, which can lead to diseconomies of scale in periods of heavy demand. As such, we learn more about how decisions can be prioritized and why smoothing warehouse operations is so important when it comes to managing fluctuations in activity.

From exorbitant one-time licenses to hidden maintenance fees, it seems like navigating the range of approaches to pricing software can often be somewhat of a minefield. Here, we explore some of the main approaches and learn more about the bad practices to look out for.

From a company perspective, while dealing with flows of goods, supply chain is the mastery of optionality when facing variability. This episode focuses on what the term ‘Supply Chain’ means, and what are the organisational implications of this definition.

The very design of a supply chain network has a huge impact on inventory optimization. For this episode, we're delighted to welcome Pinak Dutta, Head of Network Optimization at Spreetail, to discuss what constitutes good design and how organisations can exploit this to improve their inventory allocation.

When relational databases emerged in the 70’s they provided a breakthrough for companies to turn their supply chain digital, decades before the 'digitalization' buzzword. However, event sourcing has now emerged as a more manageable, more reliable and more scalable way to design supply chain systems compared to the relational design. At the core of this revolution, a perspective on reality itself which is too frequently under appreciated by supply chain practitioners.

A forecasting competition based on Walmart store data ended June 2020. Lokad ranked 6th out of 909 teams. In this episode, we have a closer look at this unusual sporting event, and what it takes to win such a competition. We are joined by Rafael de Rezende who was leading the Lokad team in this competition.