
Explore the fundamentals of supply chain and operations management, using a simple apple-from-farm story to illustrate key metrics like on-time delivery, inventory, and cost per delivery.
Explore how procurement, manufacturing, logistics, and fulfillment drive retail supply chains, with planning, coordination, reverse logistics, returns and repair, and key stakeholders like vendors and distributors.
Learn how supply chain analytics use data from procurement, manufacturing, and fulfillment to improve logistics. See how store sales, delivery, replenishment, and production planning guide inventory and lead time decisions.
Explore how supply chain analytics reduce procurement, carrying, and shortage costs to improve margins, planning accuracy, and create a lean, risk-aware supply chain.
Explore the four types of analytics in supply chain analytics, descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive, using past data and examples to forecast and guide smarter decisions.
Discover descriptive analytics in the supply chain, revealing past outcomes and providing visibility through a single source of truth. Apply it to warehouse workload and transportation route analysis.
Diagnose why delays occur in the supply chain by isolating a specific event, identifying anomalies, and uncovering root causes to reduce lead times and optimize performance.
Prescriptive analytics combines descriptive and predictive insights to recommend optimal decisions and actions, such as inventory optimization, route planning, and scheduling in logistics, using large data and Excel-based analysis.
Explore factors driving demand variation, including seasonality, fashion, income shifts, promotions, and the bullwhip effect, and learn how a 2x2 matrix links functional and innovative products to supply chain strategies.
Collect data for demand management, including sales, social media, and operations, feed it into ARIMA forecasting, and apply quantitative and qualitative methods to demand planning balancing inventory and cash flow.
Explore time series forecasting by identifying data with timestamp and value, recognizing trend and seasonality, and applying exponential smoothing (triple), regression, ARIMA or SARIMA to forecast stock prices and revenue.
Learn how to plot time series data in Excel using a scatter plot, compare runs scored to the mean, and visualize fluctuations above and below the average.
Explore time series components—trend, seasonality, and noise—and how granularity, frequency, and horizon rules affect forecast accuracy, illustrated with stock price examples and level concepts.
Identify and distinguish the trend, seasonality, and noise components in time series data through simple plots and real examples, including uptrends, downtrends, and stationary series.
Analyze time series with trend and seasonal components in e-commerce revenue. Visualize quarterly patterns, identify fourth-quarter spikes from Black Friday and Christmas, and apply moving average or exponential trend lines.
Practice time series analysis in Excel by creating a moving average plot of airline miles data, discuss seasonality and the 2000–2001 decline, and review the attached solution.
Explore rollover (naive), moving average, weighted moving average, and exponential smoothing for sales forecasts in Excel, comparing absolute errors to improve forecast accuracy.
Explore time series error and accuracy by comparing mad, sse, and mape across two datasets, showing why mad and sse can be unreliable and why mape reveals percentage-based forecast accuracy.
Complete the assignment by applying simple exponential smoothing in Excel using the Data Analysis Toolpak, set the damping factor as 1 minus alpha, and generate output and a chart.
Examine a case study forecasting manufacturing supply chain disruptions with a dataset, computing lead times, delays, and financial impact, and evaluating supplier reliability and risk scores for a resilience dashboard.
Learn about Udemy's two-hour limit for the free course and the certificate policy. Consider extending the content to ten hours and share your feedback on Udemy or q&a.
Every product you buy, from groceries to smartphones, has traveled through a complex web of suppliers, warehouses, logistics providers, and retailers.
This interconnected system is known as the supply chain, and it is the lifeline of global commerce. Yet, in today’s fast-paced and uncertain world, traditional supply chain management is no longer enough. Companies must harness the power of data and analytics to stay competitive, resilient, and efficient.
This course, Supply Chain Analytics: From Fundamentals to Forecasting, is designed to give you a complete, step-by-step journey into the world of supply chain data analysis. Whether you’re new to supply chain concepts or looking to deepen your expertise, this program will guide you from the basics of supply chain operations all the way to advanced techniques such as predictive forecasting and prescriptive modeling.
We start by laying a strong foundation—exploring what supply chains are, why they matter, and how different functions such as procurement, manufacturing, distribution, and logistics come together to deliver value. Once the fundamentals are clear, we dive into supply chain analytics, breaking it down into the four pillars: descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Each of these will be explained with real-world examples so you not only understand the concepts but also see how they apply to business problems.
One of the highlights of this course is our deep focus on demand management and forecasting. You will learn how to identify the causes of demand variation, apply time series analysis, detect seasonality and trends, and use techniques like weighted moving averages to make reliable forecasts. We’ll also cover essential performance metrics such as MAPE, MAD, and RMSE, ensuring you can evaluate forecast accuracy with confidence.
To bridge the gap between theory and practice, this course includes hands-on assignments and a case study where you’ll forecast disruptions in a manufacturing supply chain. This practical exposure will sharpen your analytical thinking and give you skills that can be applied directly in the workplace.
Whether you are a student eager to build a career in supply chain or analytics, a professional working in logistics, procurement, or operations, or a business leader looking to optimize your company’s performance, this course is tailored to help you gain confidence in applying analytics to one of the most critical areas of business today.
By the end of this course, you will:
Gain clarity on how supply chains function at every level.
Understand the true role of analytics in driving smarter decisions.
Develop the ability to analyze, forecast, and optimize supply chains using data-driven methods.
Build confidence to handle real-world business challenges in logistics, operations, or manufacturing.
Whether you are a student aspiring to enter the field, a professional looking to upgrade your skills, or an entrepreneur seeking to streamline your business operations, this course will empower you with practical, job-ready skills in supply chain analytics.