Email
sinha.rk.dr@gmail.com
Why do we love Google Maps?
Most of the users of Google Maps love it. The underlying reason is its accurate prediction of ETA. Though it does change during travel, it provides a reliable prediction at any point in time. Why is it so?
The app uses one of the fundamental principles of supply chain management. If you want to be close to the marketplace reality, refresh your predictions as often as you get fresh data of reality. In case of Google Maps, fresh data on traffic keeps coming continuously. Can you imagine what its accuracy would be if it refreshed its prediction only once every hour?
Apart from frequency of refresh, another important aspect is the granularity at which predictions are done. Change in traffic is assessed not just for the entire route but for each segment of it, which makes the prediction much more reliable.
What can we learn from Google Maps and apply to our demand predictions? Most manufacturers get updated data on retail orders daily. Retailers get consumer offtake data continuously. Let’s use it to get a better view of reality to drive the backend supply chains.
Since the data is quite big, prediction refresh should be done in a no-touch autonomous mode.