After successful completion of the course, the student has understanding of:
- short-term demand forecasting
- basic and advanced models for inventory management at a single location
- the relation between stages in the supply chain and the logical consequences of inventory planning decisions in one stage of the supply chain for other stages
Further, the student is able to:
- construct and evaluate appropriate inventory control policies in a single stockpoint for a wide diversity of Stock Keeping Units
- construct short-term demand forecasting models (time series analysis) and to evaluate its performance
- link demand forecasting models to inventory models, and to plan replenishment decisions in a practical setting
make a quantitative analysis of inventory allocation in multi-echelon supply chains for fast movers
|
|
This course covers demand forecasting and advanced models for inventory management of stock keeping units at a single site, as well as in multi-echelon supply chains. The large part of the course is built around a case at the distribution center of a well-known Dutch retailer. The students receive real historic sales data for a range of stock keeping units (SKUs) as well as cost data. The challenge is to identify appropriate forecasting and inventory control techniques given the specifics of each stock keeping units. The parameters of the demand forecasting models have to be estimated, and appropriate inventory control parameters have to be determined. The student’s performance is evaluated using additional demand data that will be revealed after the assignments have been submitted. To facilitate this analysis, a range of demand forecasting and inventory control policies is discussed in the theoretical part of the course. It is up to the students to select appropriate methods and to match them with the SKUs.
Further, inventory models will be extended to multi-echelon supply chains where the various stages should be appropriately linked. Topics are a.o. lot sizing in supply chains, safety inventories in supply chains, installation stock policies versus echelon stock policies, and inventory rationing in case of shortages.
|
 |
|