Advanced Analytics and Big Data in Supply Chain Planning

Every supply chain generates big data. Supply chain analytics turn that data into valuable insights. Across all stages of the supply chain, tons of data are being produced every hour. Most of the companies are collecting this information in data lakes. From our point of view, there are two big challenges: Most supply chain managers, even those with good technical skills, have little or no experience with data science methods and algorithms to get real insights out of the data. This leads to the fact that they do not see the potential what might be possible with applying supply chain analytics methods on their data pools. The second challenge is that most companies do not have a structured process to build customized, data-driven solutions along the supply chain. As a result, big data opportunities and optimization potential cannot be evaluated. In the following article, we explain why supply chain analytics and big data will play an increasingly important role in managing complex supply chains efficiently. We show the opportunities across the supply chain and introduce a new innovative software approach to build data-driven solutions much more efficiently than in traditional systems.