Supply chain management involves making a range of decisions, over multiple horizons, in the presence of a wide variety of sources of uncertainty. I use my framework for sequential decision problems, which has been developed to teach computers how to model and solve these complex problems, to guide *people* in how to approach problems in supply chain management. The video identifies four major dimensions of any sequential decision problem, and uses these to pose a series of questions: 1) what are the performance metrics, 2) what decisions are being made (and who makes them), 3) what are the sources of uncertainty and 4) what information is needed to make decisions (and evaluate performance)? The idea is to use the questions we have to answer to teach a computer to model a supply chain, and instead use these to help guide people how to approach this rich problem class.
