Almost every known large industry today produces and distributes goods at scale over a supply chain. In a typical supply chain, as a product travels across the network of supply chain nodes–from the producer, to the intermediate nodes (e.g pre-processor, distributor etc.), all the way to the end consumer–each node adds'value' to the product until it is ready to be sold off at the final node (e.g. retail stores). Supply chains are customarily designed and operated to minimise costs or maximise profits (or both). One of the most important considerations is to decide'when' and'how' much to replenish each product at each node of the supply chain, as it proceeds from production to consumption. While this customary approach works well for products that'do not perish' or have an unlimited shelf life, a straightforward extension of this approach for perishable products (e.g.

In this desperate fight for saving ourselves and our species, the main weapon we have deployed is intelligence. What we are witnessing is a spectacular collaboration of individual and collective human and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As we deal with the fear of a biological apocalypse, will our fear of the other apocalypse, AI taking over humans, reduce to give way to more confidence and faith in tech based innovation? Artificial intelligence Canadian health monitoring company Blue Dot's AI algorithms had predicted coronavirus long before it went viral and was officially declared as a threat. Over the last few weeks, research teams worldwide have been using AI to study big data to power breakthroughs in finding the elusive cure for Covid-19.

The snow-clad Swiss Alps offer me a big white canvas each year to exchange ideas with the mélange of minds that shape the world. As part of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, this year, representatives of the WEF, as well as experts from business, politics and academia will convene to strategise on the theme of Globalisation 4.0 and creating a global architecture to leverage the best of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Bold business models It is quintessential to evaluate the existing means and business models of economic growth and a dramatic change is inevitable. A bolder approach to business models, policies, collaborations and alliances is the need of the hour. Identifying the Globalisation 4.0 charter The key will be whether we can rise to the challenge of Globalisation 4.0 and collaborate to disrupt.

Let me start with a piece of trivia. As of today, research suggests there are already more connected "things" than human beings on earth. Not surprising, really, considering that each of us possesses multiple devices to simply stay connected. Think of these countless everyday physical objects being connected to the internet. Some studies predict that the number of connected devices will touch 50 billion by 2020.

As technology gets smarter, humanity faces major questions about the future. Will computers become superhuman computers become superhuman and so intelligent that they can tackle any task and do it better than a human counterpart? Not in the next few decades, but rapid advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) fields means that such a scenario could happen. Humans could in fact create their own obsolescence, and approximately half of all current jobs could be automated. That's without the availability of a super intelligence to oversee disparate AI-driven technologies.

Bidding farewell to 2017 and just in the third month of 2018, we observe marked differences in the Big Data space. Last year's trends focused on major themes such as: management of Big Data, security and privacy of the data and its access, emergence of cloud as a front runner in data management, tempering of hype and expectation cycles, emergency of internet of things (IoT) as a major data generator, emergence of new tools in the end-to-end data management and data governance space, emergence of self-service analytical tools where they catered to data ingestion, manipulation, wrangling, analytics and reporting, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) got good traction. Overall, 2017 has turned out to be a year of Technology Strategy rather than a business-focused strategy, with many organisations having ventured into PoC on AI, ML and Data Science. The year gone by also saw emergence of NoSQL databases in a fierce competition to Hadoop Storage. The year that will be Infonomics and data monetisation ideas will take root in 2018, which would try to put a value on the data that has been captured.

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) are increasingly considering leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage their marketing budgets. Marketing spends on digital channels have increased by 20 percent per annum as per industry estimates. Digital marketing itself has incorporated AI by skipping a generation of intermediate system development. Modern marketing automation platforms already include chatbots for customer interaction, voice recognition/translation in their websites and semantic search in their product catalogues. However, the shift from traditional marketing to digital marketing was driven by the very fact that one could drive more personalised and segmented messaging to customers to drive up conversion rates.

India's outsourcing industry is pegged at $150 billion and has been hailed as an engine of job creation and plays a key role in driving the economy to greater heights. The trajectory of growth started around the year 2000 and led to the country building capabilities in the areas of Information Technology (IT), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Engineering Services Outsourcing (ESO). This presented India with a natural and acquired advantage in terms of talent availability, putting it on the global map as a destination for high-quality and competitive technology skills. Today, the Indian ESO sector is well-poised to shift away from the traditional back-office services to more high-end technology work and serve growing sectors such as the global Aerospace & Defence (A&D) industry. Strengths and Opportunities Galore There are some key strengths that India inherently possesses as a potential growth destination of high-end engineering services.

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Are you intrigued by the sheer ease with which Facebook tags your friends and family when you post a photo? Or how Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa & Microsoft's Cortana help you find information, give you direction and add events to your calendar? How does Outlook know that some emails should go into your Clutter folder when you never marked them as spam? All these are powered by Artificial Intelligence technologies.