Difference between revisions of "Inventory Analytics --- book by Prof. Roberto Rossi; Open Book Publishers"

From IFORS Developing Countries Online Resources
Jump to: navigation, search
(Created page with "'''Introduction''' This book originates as a collection of self-contained lectures. These lectures are divided into an introduction to inventory control, which outlines the f...")
 
Line 12: Line 12:
  
 
link to material: https://www.ifors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Rossi-Inventory_Analytics-optimized.pdf<html>
 
link to material: https://www.ifors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Rossi-Inventory_Analytics-optimized.pdf<html>
 
 
[[Category: Industry]]
 

Revision as of 02:50, 24 June 2021

Introduction

This book originates as a collection of self-contained lectures. These lectures are divided into an introduction to inventory control, which outlines the foundations of inventory systems; followed by three chapters on deterministic inventory control, demand forecasting, and stochastic inventory control.

Beside Inventory, the title of the book refers to Analytics. This is nowadays a concept that has been inflated with a plethora of meanings, so that it becomes difficult to understand exactly what each of us means when we refer to it. The Cambridge Dictionary defines Analytics as “a process in which a computer examines information using mathematical methods in order to find useful patterns.” However, this appears to be quite a restrictive definition for our purposes.

To better understand the nature of Analytics, it is useful to observe that Analytics is often broken down into three parts: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. Descriptive Analytics is concerned with answering the question: “what happened?” Predictive Analytics is concerned with answering the question: “what will happen?”

Prescriptive Analytics is concerned with answering the question: “how can we make it happen?” These are clearly complex questions that cannot be answered by mere number crunching on a computer: to answer these questions a decision maker must leverage soft as well as hard skills.

Many tend to think that the Analytics phenomenon is a recent development related to widespread availability of computing power. However, in his work “De Inventione,” the Roman philosopher Cicero states that “there are three parts to Prudence: Memory, Intelligence, and Foresight.” It is clear that Memory is the skill required to answer the question “what happened?”; Foresight, that required to answer the question “what will happen?”; and Intelligence, that required to answer the question “how can we make it happen?” It appears then that Analytics is just a contemporary rebranding of an art that has been known for millenia. Prudentia is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. Inventio is the central canon of rhetoric, a method devoted to systematic search for arguments. Incidentally, inventio also means inventory. In fact, when a new argument is found, it is invented, in the sense of “added to the inventory” of arguments. Prudentia and Inventio are the foundations upon which the art of Rhetoric stands.

link to material: https://www.ifors.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Rossi-Inventory_Analytics-optimized.pdf