Walton College Logistics Faculty Member Wins National Award

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Matt Waller, professor, Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain (Photo by Russell Cothren)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Supply Chain Managers Education Conference has awarded the E. Grosvenor Plowman Award to Matthew A. Waller, professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, and Brent Williams, assistant professor at Auburn University, for the best manuscript accepted for presentation at its 2009 conference, which was held Sept. 20 in Chicago, Ill.

Waller and Williams’ research, “Improving Order Forecast Accuracy: A Vector Error Correction” was presented at the Sept. 20 conference in Chicago. The award is named for Plowman, who was a lifetime supporter of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, which sponsored the conference. Since the award’s inception more than 30 years ago, it has been awarded annually. The objective of the conference is to provide academics and students a forum to hear the latest in supply chain management research.

Waller said, “Brent and I were very pleased to be honored by our peers of supply chain educators. This conference offers a venue for networking with colleagues from around the globe.”

Academics are given the opportunity to submit their research for consideration of industry professionals as well as other academics.”

Waller also holds the Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain. He has a doctoral degree in business logistics from the Pennsylvania State University. During the past year and a half he lived in Shanghai, China, running the Walton College Executive MBA program and conducting research on global supply chain management. Since January of 2006, he has been systems editor of the Journal of Business Logistics, the flagship academic journal of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. He is also co-editor of International Journal of Logistics Management.

Williams, who received a master’s in transportation and logistics in 2005 and a doctoral degree from the Walton College in 2008, is an assistant professor in the department of aviation and supply chain at the College of Business at Auburn University.

In Waller and William’s study, they used use an econometric model — the vector error correction model — which has been used heavily in other disciplines to improve retail-order forecast accuracy by leveraging the long-run equilibrium between point-of-sale and order history. Deviations from this long-run equilibrium relationship, which is described as deviation from the retailer’s inventory target, are leveraged by the model to improve the supplier’s order forecast at its retail distribution center. They tested the performance of the vector error correction model in ready-to-eat cereal, canned soup and yogurt categories, using 104 weeks of data supplied by a global consumer packaged-goods company. From the results, they found significant improvement in the order forecasting accuracy of the model relative to other commonly used time-series methodologies, which likely leads to improvement of key supplier metrics such as inventory turnover, gross margin return on inventory investment, in-stock levels, and ultimately profitability.