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Driving Risk Out of S&OP Forecasts

MIT’s Supply Chain blog presented a nice research study by Minhaaj Khan and Srideepti Kidambi and supervised by Dr. Tugba Efendigil.  Their study is a good example of using less data rather than more to design a simple readily explainable approach that increases profits while reducing errors in ordering.  It’s an easy win.  Will it work in all scenarios? No, probably not.  But it also doesn’t take long to try and implement.  Occam’s Razor in action. It’s interesting they did not even need to know about promotions to achieve their gains. In many businesses the promotions can wreck plans. But in this consumer product it turns out they don’t disrupt.

Big data can sometimes confuse us rather than enlighten.

scamit-logo  via Driving Risk Out of S&OP Forecasts

 

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Posted on February 2, 2019 by in Logistics, Quantitative Methods, Service Management, Supply Chains

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Some Essays using R

I am starting to write some analytics essays using R and Rmarkdown, and publishing variously in HTML and pdf.  They are gathered here.

This is probably temporary as I learn better how to do this.

Essays using R

 

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Posted on February 1, 2019 by in Advanced Computing, analytics

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Shipper hackles rise as Hong Kong box terminals announce operating alliance

Sam Whelan penned a report on the alliance of four companies managing terminals at the Kwai Tsing terminals in Hong Kong.

Apparently shippers are furious. They believe there will be collusion and rates will rise as a result.  Rates are already higher in Hong Kong than the mainland, and the Hong Kong fees add more cost.

The firms say it’s only to make the port more efficient and gain higher throughput.  Volume handled has been declining in 2018 compared to the prior year.

It’s true that greater cooperation would most likely improve port throughput.  Coordinating yard movements and berth use would offer possibilities for gains. I’m not sure it would have to be at the level of fixing prices.   Improving port and yard bottlenecks is an important activity for firms in port management today.

But you can bet shippers will be on their guard for any collusion on pricing, especially when there’s a falling need for services.  And since it’s China that is involved– these are Chinese firms– we can’t rule out geopolitical considerations that would be collusive.  WE need to watch this one and see how the volumes and prices play out, just like the shippers will.

logo  via Shipper hackles rise as Hong Kong box terminals announce operating alliance – The Loadstar

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Posted on January 10, 2019 by in Logistics, Ports, Production Operations, Shipping, Strategy, Supply Chains

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