Supply chain · data · practical AI
Norman Li
I forecast demands, build the analysis nobody asked for, and write down what I learn along the way. Supply chain by trade, data and AI by curiosity.
Stream
Everything →
Jul 11
Reading about theory of constraints again. Keep circling back to it whenever a planning process feels stuck — the bottleneck is rarely where the complaints are loudest.
Jul 8
TIL: pandas.DataFrame.explode() solves the bill-of-materials flattening problem cleanly — one list-column per parent, exploded into one row per component, no manual loop.
Jun 25
Every team measures forecast accuracy differently, and almost nobody states which one they mean. MAPE punishes low-volume SKUs unfairly; WMAPE fixes that but hides SKU-level misses. Worth writing up properly at some point.
Timeline
2026
Writing full-time on supply chain × practical AI
2023
Moved into demand planning & procurement analytics
2021
Picked up Python and SQL to stop waiting on IT for reports
2020
Started as a business analyst in supply chain operations