Tech talk: Old meets new

Combining operational research and machine learning to make optimal supply chain decisions

Recent supply chain disruption has reminded us all the extent to which the future is inherently uncertain. Quantifying the uncertainty in the demand for products and then using this information to inform production planning decisions involves combining techniques from operations research (OR) and machine learning (ML). 

In this webinar, Faculty Data Scientists Mark Worrall and Hannan Saddiq will discuss how to bring these two fields together. The talk will build intuition for the approach whilst also giving technical details. They’ll discuss:

• The technical specifications that probabilistic forecasts must meet to solve real-world forecasting problems.
• How to combine stochastic optimisation with model predictive control. This is necessary for long term decision making that incorporates future uncertainty whilst also meeting production constraints.
• A case study which illustrates the approach for a client project using Frontier, Faculty’s Decision Intelligence product.