From the course: Supply Chain and Operations Management Tips

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts.

Use analytics for supply chain

Use analytics for supply chain

From the course: Supply Chain and Operations Management Tips

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Use analytics for supply chain

“

- Supply chain analytics is a hot topic and one that's full of buzzwords. So it's easy to get confused when people talk about descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. But understanding the differences between them can help you make better choices about the tools and the skills that you really need to move your supply chain forward. Let's look at three kinds of questions that supply chain managers often need to answer. Then we can see how analytics can help with each of them. The first kind of question we often face is what happened in the past. When we answer questions about the past, we use descriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics involve structuring and filtering data and then looking for patterns. For example, you could use descriptive analytics to look backwards and determine the impact of a promotion or to calculate the savings from a project. The second kind of question we often need to answer is what will happen in the future. To answer these questions, we build…

Contents