Machine Learning for Supply Chains

This course is the second in a specialization for Machine Learning for Supply Chain Fundamentals. In this course, we explore all aspects of time series, especially for demand prediction. We'll start by gaining a foothold in the basic concepts surrounding time series, including stationarity, trend (drift), cyclicality, and seasonality. Then, we'll spend some time analyzing correlation methods in relation to time series (autocorrelation). In the 2nd half of the course, we'll focus on methods for demand prediction using time series, such as autoregressive models. Finally, we'll conclude with a project, predicting demand using ARIMA models in Python.

In this course, we'll make predictions on product usage and calculate optimal safety stock storage. We'll start with a time series of shoe sales across multiple stores on three different continents. To begin, we'll look for unique insights and other interesting things we can find in the data by performing groupings and comparing products within each store. Then, we'll use a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model to make predictions on future sales. In addition to making predictions, we'll analyze the provided statistics (such as p-score) to judge the viability of using the SARIMA model to make predictions. Then, we'll tune the hyper-parameters of the model to garner better results and higher statistical significance. Finally, we'll make predictions on safety stock by looking to the data for monthly usage predictions and calculating safety stock from the formula involving lead times.

In this course, we’ll learn about more advanced machine learning methods that are used to tackle problems in the supply chain. We’ll start with an overview of the different ML paradigms (regression/classification) and where the latest models fit into these breakdowns. Then, we’ll dive deeper into some of the specific techniques and use cases such as using neural networks to predict product demand and random forests to classify products. An important part to using these models is understanding their assumptions and required preprocessing steps. We’ll end with a project incorporating advanced techniques with an image classification problem to find faulty products coming out of a machine.