Business Analytics Symposium draws record crowds

Business Analytics Symposium draws record crowds

by Bree Sabin

This year’s Business Analytics Symposium, on October 27, drew more than 300 business professionals, students, faculty/staff and alumni who wanted to learn more about the fast-changing field of supply chain analytics. Co-hosted by the Center for Business Analytics and the Supply Chain Management Institute, this was the fifth year the college has presented the symposium, with attendees traveling from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Kentucky.

The symposium is a critical link between education and the business community. “Our college was the first in Ohio to train graduates in business analytics and intelligence,” Dean Ray Braun told the crowd. “Data science and business analytics have become very hot topics in business, and with the digitization of more and more information, companies are looking for tools to analyze the data and turn it into useful information for decision-making.”

Keynote presenter, Carlos Londono, opened the symposium discussing the importance of a global supply chain. Londono is vice president of Global Supply Chain at Owens-Illinois, where he is responsible for optimizing procurement, logistics and supply chain planning and execution for O-I’s operations in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

“One of the things I find is that companies that are able to bridge academia with business are very effective,” Londono said.

The audience also heard from successful industry professionals including Amanda Christian, vice president and corporate director of procurement, CACI; Dan Hurry, chief supply chain officer, Mercy Health; and David Dobrzykowski, director of BGSU’s Supply Chain Management Institute.

The symposium concluded with the O-I Case Competition, which challenged BGSU’s business students to apply their classroom education to a real-world business issue: analyzing supply chain data of O-I businesses and developing forecasting methods and market segmentation analyses. Students started the competition in March with an initial dataset, followed by rigorous presentations and evaluations over the spring and fall. Semi-finalists presented at the symposium for awards, provided by O-I: $1,500 for first place, $1,000 for second place and $500 for third place:

● 1st place: Christine Kinsey
● 2nd place: Pallav Routh, Alex Frank and Yanan Tang
● 3rd place: Feng Han and Jiahao Tian