Supply Chain science and tech
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Lokad Quantitative Supply Chain Software
3 min introduction to the 'Quantitative Supply Chain', a predictive approach to deliver superior supply chain performance through probabilistic forecasts and numerical optimization.
Shadow IT in Supply Chains
The predictive optimization of supply chains relies on data that can usually be found somewhere in the company's existing applicative landscape. However, many of these systems may not be managed by IT as they arose from immediate operational needs that weren't covered by the official systems. Shadow IT is the name given to IT systems that are created within a company without the explicit approval of the management.
Using Weather Forecasts to improve Demand Forecasts
The accuracy of demand forecasts is considered a critical ingredient to reduct stock-outs and improve service levels. However, when demand is strongly influenced by the weather, it makes sense to consider refining the demand forecast by leveraging a weather forecast.
Why SKUs Aren’t That Simple
The Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) refers to a specific product stored in a specific location. SKUs are central in most inventory control sytems. Many inventory methods are geared around the notion of SKUs. However, the SKU perspective is sometimes detrimental to the very problems that the supply chain is trying to address.
A Domain Specific Language (DSL) for Supply Chain
Supply chains are so complex that regular configuration-driven software can't accomodate the sheer diversity of situations faced by practitioners. These limitations apply to inventory control problems as well as demand forecasting situations. Domain-specific languages (DSL) provide an answer to this class of problems.
What Is Slowbalization?
Due to a vast spectrum of factors, world trade as we know it is changing. From Europe to Asia to the United States, there are changes in the air that have resulted in political forces around the world leaning away from long-standing trends of economic globalization, such as Donald Trump's recent tariff stance against China.
Negative Knowledge in Supply Chain
The Supply Chain Antipatterns represent negative knowledge, that is, knowledge about what doesn't work. Surprisingly, negative knowledge tends to be more robust and more lasting than its positive counterpart, that is, knowledge about what works.
Toxic Patterns In Supply Chain Software
Great software products in supply chain are few and far between. Most products start as mediocre, and unfortunately, go downhill as years pass. In this episode of LokadTV we explore why we are so 'out of love' with the products we use in the Supply Chain industry and learn what are the key symptoms of the dismal IT landscape many companies find themselves in nowadays.
Differentiable Programming in Supply Chain (Part 3/3)
Differentiable Programming is a hybrid perspective between statistical learning and numerical optimization. This mix is uniquely suited to deliver predictive optimization for supply chains, which also require a mix of learning and optimization.
Differentiable Programming in Supply Chain (Part 2/3)
Yann LeCun, the director of AI research at Facebook, argues that ‘Deep Learning’ has out-lived its usefulness and has coined Differentiable Programming as a fresh machine learning perspective. In particular, this perspective proves itself of prime relevance to address supply chain challenges.