I recently went to a talk on Reinforcement Learning (RL) in my local .Net development group. I found the topic fascinating. For those not familiar with Reinforcement learning; it is a type of unsupervised machine learning where the algorithm uses real-world feedback over time to learn what to do. Instead of providing a set of …
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Tag Archives: Decision Support
Recently, I was out with some friends to check out a Chinese restaurant I had never been to before. As usual, I looked forward to getting my fortune cookie. My fortune was totally nonsensical as happens sometimes but my friend’s fortune read as follows: “Getting the right answers is only possible when you have asked …
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The Business of improving a Supply Chain is a similar experience to digging a French drain. My 1730 New England farmhouse sits a bit downhill from my driveway, and when it rains hard, or for long periods, the water will follow the slope from this watershed and make its way into my cellar. I have …
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There are many production scheduling tools available commercially. Some are more tailored to specific environments (such as a specific type of manufacturing) while others are applicable to a wide range of applications. When we talk about Advanced Production Scheduling Tools, there are certain characteristics that we have in mind including the following: 1) Both materials …
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I just finished a book on the swirling times we are in, called Thank you for Being Late by Thomas L. Friedman. In it Mr. Friedman pauses to reflect on the forces currently reshaping our world. With the tumultuous, confusing, threatening, forces of advances in technology, (due to Moore’s Law), Globalization of the Market, and Climate …
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Supply Chain Survey 2013: Gaining Competitive Advantage If you’re reading our blog, you are probably someone who is deeply interested in supply chain improvement. So we’d like to invite you to participate in this brief survey. And in return, we will send you exclusive, early access to the results of the survey along with our …
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Building applications, especially custom ones, carries with it the burden of answering the question: Does this do what the customer wants? With complicated systems with many interacting features and business rules, answering this question can be daunting. In fact, evaluating the answer can be daunting too, from the perspective of the customer. Having the sales …
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Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is an integrated business management process that enables a company to continually balance and manage the supply chain supply and demand to achieve its strategic and tactical business objectives. More and more business leaders are relying on S&OP to align and improve decision making across the disparate parts of their organization. …
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The summer issue of Manufacturing Today includes an article authored by Ted Schaefer and Alan Kosansky entitled Face Complexity – Making Sound Business Decisions. “With every passing year, the amount and variety of information available to make business decisions continues its exponential growth. As a result, business leaders have an opportunity to exploit the possibilities inherent …
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