University-Industry Collaboration at its Best: Analytics Workshop in Cardiff

On the 18th and 19th of July, almost twenty Panalpina employees descended upon Cardiff Business School aiming to answer the following question:

“How can forecasting and analytics be applied to enable improvements in my daily work life?”

Employees from all Panalpina departments attended the workshop, traveling from Europe and from the US to Cardiff University.

Participants were instructed to bring their own ideas and suggestions for the implementation of Data analytics and forecasting in to Panalpina.  During the final phase of the workshop, the participants then revisited these topics and came up with some excellent ideas to be applied to their everyday work.

Topics covered included: decision making and how to quantify the expected results of a business decision; forecasting time series and how to choose the right forecast; the value of human judgement compared with forecasting; algorithmic thinking, and; an introduction to machine learning.

Training was provided by:

Professor Aris Syntetos - Chair in Operational Research and Operations Management and the Panalpina Chaired Professor of Manufacturing and Logistics

Dr Emrah Demir - Senior Lecturer in Management Science and Panalpina Associate Professor of Manufacturing and Logistics

Dr Qinyun Li - Lecturer in Supply Chain Dynamics

Fevos Charalampidis - Former KTP Associate and Logistics Manufacturing Services Manager at Panalpina

Mikael Sacco – Advanced Analytics Manager at Panalpina

This workshop provides an excellent example of the possibilities enabled through academic/industry collaboration – participants were able to absorb ideas from academia and immediately implement them into practice.

The workshop also gives participants access to a wealth of further knowledge and an ongoing relationship with the teaching staff in Cardiff University Business School.

Events such as these are one of the primary reasons for the existence of our research centre and we were extremely proud of all participants for their hard work and dedication to the complexities of analytics and forecasting.

Congratulations to all attendees and we look forward to hosting the next batch of budding Panalpina data analysts!