Polly Mitchell-Guthrie

Kinaxis

Bio

Polly Mitchell-Guthrie is the VP of Industry Outreach and Thought Leadership at Kinaxis, the recognized leader in digital supply chain management for concurrent planning. Prior to joining Kinaxis, she was the Director of Analytical Consulting Services within Enterprise Analytics and Data Sciences at the University of North Carolina Health Care System. Previously she was Senior Manager of the Advanced Analytics Customer Liaison Group at analytics powerhouse SAS, where her team served as a bridge between R&D and external customers and internal SAS divisions. Before that she was Director of the SAS Global Academic Program, leading SAS’ outreach to colleges and universities worldwide to incorporate SAS into their teaching. Polly began her career at SAS in Strategic Investments and later served in Alliances, after working in the nonprofit sector in philanthropy and social services. She has an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received her BA in Political Science as a Morehead Scholar. Polly is a member of the Foresight Advisory Board for the International Institute of Forecasters, was a co-founder of the third chapter of Women in Machine Learning and Data Science (now 100 chapters on 6 continents), and has been very active with INFORMS (the leading association for professionals in analytic and operations research), where she was a founding member and Chair of the Analytics Certification Board and Secretary of the Analytics Society.

Track: Logistics

Making AI-Powered Forecasts Useful to Supply Chains

Artificial intelligence has tremendous promise, but it is not enough to sprinkle AI fairy dust on a forecast to make it useful for supply chains. After all, as statistician George Box famously told us, “All models are wrong, some are useful.” What does it take to make useful forecasting models, and what is the role that AI plays in doing so? How do we manage the balance of automation and human insight? How can we mitigate ‘wrong’ forecasts that occur from information failures before and after the model is built? Intelligent agility can mitigate tradeoffs and help manage disruptions to ensure that forecasting feeds into a process that delivers the value the C-suite expects these days from supply chain. This talk will outline five principles for success and provide practical examples for doing so.