The Supply Chain Managers Education Conference has awarded the E. Grosvenor
Plowman Award to Matthew
A. Waller, professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the
University of Arkansas, and Brent Williams, assistant professor at Auburn
University, for the best manuscript accepted for presentation at its 2009
conference, which was held Sept. 20 in Chicago, Ill.
 Waller
and Williams' research, "Improving Order Forecast Accuracy: A Vector Error
Correction" was presented at the Sept. 20 conference in Chicago. The award is
named for Plowman, who was a lifetime supporter of the Council of Supply Chain
Management Professionals, which sponsored the conference. Since the award's
inception more than 30 years ago, it has been awarded annually. The objective of
the conference is to provide academics and students a forum to hear the latest
in supply chain management research.
Waller said, "Brent and I were very pleased to be honored by our peers of
supply chain educators. This conference offers a venue for networking with
colleagues from around the globe."
Academics are given the opportunity to submit their research for
consideration of industry professionals as well as other academics."
Waller also holds the Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain. He has a
doctoral degree in business logistics from the Pennsylvania State University.
During the past year and a half he lived in Shanghai, China, running the Walton
College Executive MBA program and conducting research on global supply chain
management. Since January of 2006, he has been systems editor of the Journal
of Business Logistics, the flagship academic journal of the Council of
Supply Chain Management Professionals. He is also co-editor of International
Journal of Logistics Management.
Williams, who received a master's in transportation and logistics in 2005 and
a doctoral degree from the Walton College in 2008, is an assistant professor in
the department of aviation and supply chain at the College of Business at Auburn
University.
In Waller and William's study, they used use an econometric model - the
vector error correction model - which has been used heavily in other disciplines
to improve retail-order forecast accuracy by leveraging the long-run equilibrium
between point-of-sale and order history. Deviations from this long-run
equilibrium relationship, which is described as deviation from the retailer's
inventory target, are leveraged by the model to improve the supplier's order
forecast at its retail distribution center. They tested the performance of the
vector error correction model in ready-to-eat cereal, canned soup and yogurt
categories, using 104 weeks of data supplied by a global consumer packaged-goods
company. From the results, they found significant improvement in the order
forecasting accuracy of the model relative to other commonly used time-series
methodologies, which likely leads to improvement of key supplier metrics such as
inventory turnover, gross margin return on inventory investment, in-stock
levels, and ultimately profitability.
CONTACTS
Matthew A. Waller,
professor, Garrison Endowed Chair in Supply Chain
Sam M. Walton College of Business
479-575-8741, mwaller@walton.uark.edu
Jim Crowell,
director, Supply Chain Management Research Center
Sam M. Walton College of Business
479-575-6107, jcrowell@walton.uark.edu
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