Page 4 - Logistics News Sept/Oct 2017

Thought Leadership

Machine Learning In the

digital supply chain isn’t new

By Steve Banker, contributor, E2open. Courtesy of Forbes

Machine learning has become hot this year and suppliers are investing research and development
into using machine learning in the supply chain. But in a conversation with Michael Farlekas and
John Lash – the CEO and VP of Product Marketing at E2open - I was reminded of the fact that ma-
chine learning in the supply chain is not a new technology. Last year E2open acquired Terra Tech-
nology. Terra has been using machine learning to power their demand management and demand
sensing applications since 2004. Their customers include Procter & Gamble, Unilever, General Mills
and several other global, multinational consumer goods companies.

FOR MACHINE learning to work well, it needs and store inventory. Many of these data sets
to be a big data application. In this case are accessed daily, or even several times
in addition to doing forecasting based on a day, so the dynamic nature of demand
historical sales, consumer goods companies is captured to a much higher degree than
leverage other data sets such as their retail traditional forecasting techniques.
customer’s point of sale, recent shipments E2open also acquired Orchestro last year.
of products from their warehouses to their This is a demand signal repository solution
stores, the retailer’s orders, syndicated data, which harmonizes retail Point of Sale (POS),

6 September/October 2017 | Logistics News