Research Presented to Association for Supply Chain Management Board

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From left: John Aloysius, Enno Siemsen and Rebekah Brau

John Aloysius of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas and Enno Siemsen of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison presented recently to the corporate advisory board of the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Their research — "Supply Chains Analytics and the Evolving Work of Supply Chain Managers" — was one of four projects awarded funding in 2017 from the Future of Supply Chains Research initiative of the association. The criteria for evaluating proposals included relevance to the program theme, rigor of methods and analysis, meaningful advancement of the supply chain body of knowledge and the potential to contribute to related disciplines.

In an era when new technological capabilities are rapidly enabling near real-time automation of decision technologies, the role of human supply chain managers is changing rapidly. It is challenging to incorporate both automated decision processes and human judgment in order to take advantage of the strengths of both.

The research findings, which will be released by the Association for Supply Chain Management, provided insight on industry trends on forecasting practices, big data and technology, sales and operations planning and inventory management. As a part of the research, Siemsen and Aloysius presented their joint academic work with Rebekah (Bekki) Brau of the Department of Supply Chain Management at the Walton College on integrating analytical model-based and human judgmental forecasts. Brau previously won an award for the best practical application at an industry conference for a preliminary version of this work.

The Association for Supply Chain Management is the largest non-profit association for supply chain, connecting companies around the world to the newest thought leadership on all aspects of supply chain. It is built on a foundation of APICS certification and training spanning 60 years, driving innovation to further optimize supply chains, secure competitive advantage and positively impact bottom lines.

Aloysius is professor and Oren Harris Chair in Logistics in the Walton College supply chain management department. Siemsen is associate dean of M.B.A. programs and Procter & Gamble-Bascom Professor in the operations and information management department at the University of Wisconsin. Brau is a Ph.D. student and Walton Doctoral Fellow in the supply chain management department.