Supply Chain Analytics

Welcome to Supply Chain Analytics - an exciting area that is in high demand! In this introductory course to Supply Chain Analytics, I will take you on a journey to this fascinating area that applies data analytics to define and solve problems in supply chain management. You will learn analytical skills through real-life examples to quantify the financial impact of supply chains and measure their efficiency. You will see how data analytics can be applied to various domains of a supply chain to relieve their pain points. You will learn the opportunities, salary and latest requirement of the supply chain job market. Upon completing this course, you will 1. Understand the supply chain challenges and why data analytics is critical in handling them. 2. Be able to quantify the financial impact of supply chains. 3. Know how to measure the overall supply chain efficiency by the cash conversion cycle. 4. Understand the pain points of various supply chain domains (source, make, move and sell) and how analytics may relieve them. 5. Learn supply chain job opportunities, salary statistics and the latest requirements. This course is for you, if, 1. You are exploring a career in Data Analytics and Supply Chain Management. 2. You work in supply chains or operations and hope to upskill your data analytics capabilities. 3. You want to apply data analytics skills to supply chain operations to make a practical impact. I hope you enjoy the course!

Welcome to Demand Analytics - one of the most sought-after skills in supply chain management and marketing! Through the real-life story and data of a leading cookware manufacturer in North America, you will learn the data analytics skills for demand planning and forecasting. Upon the completion of this course, you will be able to 1. Improve the forecasting accuracy by building and validating demand prediction models. 2. Better stimulate and influence demand by identifying the drivers (e.g., time, seasonality, price, and other environmental factors) for demand and quantifying their impact. AK is a leading cookware manufacturer in North America. Its newly launched top-line product was gaining momentum in the marketplace. However, a price adjustment at the peak season stimulated a significant demand surge which took AK completely by surprise and resulted in huge backorders. AK faced the risk of losing the market momentum due to the upset customers and the high cost associated with over-time production and expedited shipping. Accurate demand forecast is essential for increasing revenue and reducing cost. Identifying the drivers for demand and assessing their impact on demand can help companies better influence and stimulate demand. I hope you enjoy the course!

Welcome to Supply Chain Analytics - the art and science of applying data analytics to assess and improve supply chain performance! A supply chain is a complex system with conflicting objectives of cost efficiency and customer satisfaction. Supply chain management is becoming increasingly data driven. Through the real-life story and data of a major US telecommunication company, you will learn the analytics tools / skills to diagnose and optimize a supply chain. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to 1. Use data analytics to assess the impact of various strategies on all aspects of a supply chain, from inventory, shipping, to warehouse order fulfillment, store operations and customer satisfaction. 2. Customize the supply chain strategy by product to improve the overall cost efficiency without sacrificing customer service. 3. Obtain hands-on experience on the application and financial impact of analytics in integrated supply chain and logistics planning. VASTA (name disguised) is a major wireless carrier in the US selling cell phones through a national network of retail stores. Recently, it wrote off a huge amount of obsolete inventory each year and was suffering a significant cost inefficiency in an increasingly stagnant market. VASTA must assess the competitive environment, and renovate its supply chain to stay competitive. At the end of this course, you will help VASTA save $billions on supply chain cost and retain its leadership in a stagnant and saturated market. I hope you enjoy the course!

American Airlines (AAL), one of the world’s largest airline group and a SP500 company, is in trouble. With the growth rate of its stock price ranked at the bottom of all major US airlines, AAL needs to find out its key problems, the root causes, and how to turn the company and its stock price around. Addressing the challenge faced by AAL may well be a large-scale management consulting project. To start, business intelligence and competitive analysis (or competitive intelligence for short) is required to discover the problems and identify the causes for the company which lay the foundation for the turning-around strategies. In this course, you will gain the knowledge, skills and experience in data analytics / visualization and story-telling for effective competitive intelligence analysis. Upon completion of the course, you should be able to conduct competitive intelligence on companies of your choice like a management consultant. Note: To gain hands-on experiences in competitive intelligence via data analytics, you need to get into action. To this end, this course utilizes an external website (free) for you to practice the skills learned.

Inventory analytics is the corner stone of supply chain analytics. A company in trade industries may have 30-50% of their assets tied up in inventory. An effective inventory management can improve revenue by increasing product variety and availability, and reduce cost and speed up cash cycle by reducing excessive inventory and waste. Through real-life examples (e.g., Macy’s vs. Ross Stores), you will learn hands-on tools and skills to discover and solve inventory problems by data analytics. Upon completion, you can answer the following questions: 1. For which industries is inventory important and relevant? 2. How may inventory drive a company’s financial performance? 3. How do I know that I have an inventory problem? 4. How to classify inventory and manage it accordingly? Note: This course is for beginners and practitioners, and so it provides practical data-driven analytics for business inventory management, including inventory metrics, inventory problem diagnosis, the financial impact of inventory, and practical techniques of inventory management, rather than the mathematical models of inventory control that you can find in many other courses.