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With the advancements in information technologies and improved computational efficiencies, big data analytics (BDA) has emerged as a means of arriving at more precise predictions that better reflect customer needs, facilitate assessment of SC performance, improve the efficiency of SC, reduce reaction time, and support SC risk assessment. Ī variety of statistical analysis techniques have been used for demand forecasting in SCM including time-series analysis and regression analysis. In this sense, demand forecasting is a key approach in addressing uncertainties in supply chains. Demand uncertainties, in particular, has the greatest influence on SC performance with widespread effects on production scheduling, inventory planning, and transportation. However, this is not the case in reality, as there are uncertainties arising from variations in customers’ demand, supplies transportation, organizational risks and lead times.
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In typical SCM problems, it is assumed that capacity, demand, and cost are known parameters. Supply chain management (SCM) focuses on flow of goods, services, and information from points of origin to customers through a chain of entities and activities that are connected to one another. In doing so, there is a growing attention to analysis of consumption behavior and preferences using forecasts obtained from customer data and transaction records in order to manage products supply chains (SC) accordingly. As such, forecasting models have been widely applied in precision marketing to understand and fulfill customer needs and expectations. Nowadays, businesses adopt ever-increasing precision marketing efforts to remain competitive and to maintain or grow their margin of profit.