Summerclass: The future of decision making in supply chains
23 juni 2026 Registreer NU!How will decision making change?
Like other domains, the world of supply chain is changing fast. Based on recent cases and academic research, this class gives a clear perspective of the direction of this change, and what it means for the people working in supply chains as well as those who are designing them.
The central question is: how will decision making change? This is covered along four angles:
- What roles will agents come to play in decision making and forecasting?
- How do we place a human in the loop?
- What does this mean for traditional planning software?
- How can we make supply chains more resilient and robust in volatile economic climates?
These angles are applied to specific decisions that are made in most if not all supply chains:
- Forecasting and safety stock management
- Price optimization and promotion management
- Truly connected S&OP
- Scenario analysis and risk management
There are technical examples throughout: concrete cases in forecasting, pricing and planning, with enough detail under the hood to know what you are looking at. The course is also about the algorithms, but not just about them. The real subject is what changes around them, in the planner's role, in the software stack, in how a business commits to a forecast or a price, and in how an organisation absorbs risk when a model is part of every decision.
Program
Morning
- The state of decision making in supply chains in 2026
- From models to agents: what actually changes, what does not
- Human in the loop: patterns that work, and those that do not
- Implications for traditional planning software
Afternoon
- Forecasting and safety stock: where AI replaces the model and where it replaces the planner
- Price optimization and promotion management under volatile demand
- S&OP that is actually connected: data, agents, governance
- Scenario analysis and risk management as a daily discipline, not a quarterly exercise
Acquired skills
After this course, participants:
- Understand the changing role of planners, demand managers and S&OP leads in the next five years
- Can identify which decisions in their own supply chain are ripe for a human-in-the-loop redesign
- Recognise where AI agents genuinely change the decision making process and where they do not
- Have a defensible framework for assessing the resilience and robustness of their planning process against demand and supply shocks
- Leave with a working tool (a Claude skill) that turns the framework into a stress test of their own current way of operating
Teacher
Prof. dr. Louis-Philippe Kerkhove is Professor of Operations Management at Ghent University, where he teaches supply chain management and conducts research at the intersection of operations research, artificial intelligence and business strategy. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Economics at UGent in 2016. He is Visiting Professor at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, instructs the data-driven retailing courses at the FEB Academy, and is a regular guest lecturer at Vlerick Business School.
His academic work focuses on how data and algorithms should be deployed inside operational decision processes rather than alongside them. He is involved in the Beyond Competition project, connecting Belgian universities and business schools with operating companies.
He is the author of Data-Driven Retailing: A Non-technical Practitioners' Guide (Springer, 2022), a book aimed at managers rather than data scientists, summarizing the lessons of nearly a decade of applied work in pricing, forecasting and inventory.
Outside the university, Louis-Philippe co-founded Crunch Analytics in 2016, an analytics and AI firm working with European retailers, food manufacturers and industrial companies on the same family of problems covered in this course. The combination of academic research and live client engagements is the source of most of the cases discussed in class.
Take-aways
Participants leave with:
- A framework for evaluating how AI should and should not be inserted into their current planning and decision processes
- A working Claude skill that operationalises the framework: a structured interview that interrogates the participant's current way of working and produces a written diagnosis with prioritised improvement areas
- A reading list of academic papers and industry cases that informed the course material
- A peer network across the cohort, with a follow-up session three months after the course to discuss what each participant has actually changed
Practical Info
When: dinsdag 23 juni 2026
Where: Crowne Plaza Antwerpen ( Gerard le Grellelaan 10, 2020 Antwerpen)
For who:
Managers, decision makers and planners who want to challenge the status quo in their current operations. People who are looking for ideas on how to make their companies ready for the next five years.
This course highlights the opportunities offered by AI, but interweaves this with a true supply chain perspective: how this new technology should interplay with existing tools, traditional forecasting and optimization, and how roles within an organization are likely to change.
Participation fee?
- € 450 (Value Chain / PICS members)
- € 625 (non-members)
Questions? Contacteer ons via info@valuechain.be of +32 (0)50 40 80 80
Value Chain (Media Access) is a registered training center recognized by the Flemish government. This means you can save up to 30% by using ‘KMO Portefeuille’. (DV.O103602)
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