About Dr. Ken Fordyce

Before joining Arkieva, he had a very successful 36-year career with IBM, much of it in all aspects of supply chain (to use Intel’s Karl Kempf’s preferred term – demand supply networks) for IBM Microelectronics Division (MD). During this period, MD was a Fortune 100-size firm by itself. Fordyce was part of the teams that altered the landscape of best-practices – receiving three IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, AAAI Innovative Application Award, and INFORMS Edelman Finalist (twice) and Wagner (winner). He writes and often speaks about the “ongoing challenge,” both to practitioners and academics. In his free time, Dr. Fordyce enjoys writing programs in APL2 while running sprints.

COVID-19 Data Analysis Basics – Taking the Mystery Out of Smoothing Daily Counts

We see graphs of COVID-19 events on a regular basis. One of the most common is a bar chart for daily new events (COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths). Recently in presentations, smoothing methods used to overcome limitations is presenting the raw daily data. This blog will take some of the mystery out of smoothing methods.

COVID-19 Taking the Mystery Out of the APEX Curve and Some Basics on Restoring “Normal”

This blog provides some basic information on the curve, relates statistical concepts to policy and actions, and examines policy options for a safe restart relating them to the APEX curve. There are three essential groups of action to begin a safe restart: testing, detailed understanding of the impact of mitigation actions, and the ability to do detailed tracking.

By |2024-02-21T14:14:16-05:00April 16th, 2020|Community Intelligence, COVID-19, Data Analysis|

Some COVID-19 Data Analysis Basics – New Events, Cumulative Events, and Logarithms

We see graphs of COVID-19 events on a regular basis these days. Two common ones are bar charts for daily new events (COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths) and the “sweeping curve” to capture a cumulative number of events. Additionally, log transformations are mentioned. The purpose of this blog is to shed a bit of light on these curves and the role of the log transformation.

By |2024-02-21T14:14:32-05:00April 14th, 2020|Community Intelligence, COVID-19, Data Analysis|

Lessons From the Operating Curve for the Dual Government COVID-19 Objectives: Reopen the Economy and Eliminate COVID-19

There is plenty of material being written and posted on the challenges, estimating the growth in COVID19 incidences, and thoughts about the economy. The purpose of this is to pull from experiences in the trenches in shifting OPCURVE to provide some guidance on actions to take to help the nation achieve both critical goals.

Some Basics on the Value of S Curves and Market Adoption of a New Product

An ongoing challenge for any firm is estimating demand for new products.  This is especially true when the product has new technology or is replacing an existing product and the additional function in the new product is limited. Often a mathematical construct called an S curve is helpful. This blog provides an overview of S curves and why they can be helpful.

Taking the Mystery Out of the Rapid Growth of COVID-19 and the Purpose of Social Distancing – Some Basics for Octogenarians

The spread of the COVID19 virus is a major concern of everyone. Typically, two critical questions are being asked: why it seemed to grow so quickly over the last few weeks and what is the impact of social distancing. This blog provides a kitchen table explanation of “rapid growth” and how social distancing might dampen growth.

Conditional Probability Made Easy – Heart of Machine Learning

Probabilities are persuasive in supply chains and analytic methods – especially in machine learning where conditional probability is a dominant underlying structure that makes or breaks the success of an application. In this blog, we will learn how to take the mystery out of the term ‘conditional probability’.

Optimization and Central Planning: Compass or Advanced Navigation

Two ongoing questions are: (1) when an organization migrates from an Excel-based central/supply/master plan is it best to go to a rule-based method or an optimization-based method and (2) is optimization a compass that identifies true north or is it an advanced navigation system. This blog outlines my view and alternative views on each question.

By |2020-03-09T17:50:50-04:00February 26th, 2020|Supply Planning, When to optimize|

Pin It on Pinterest