Lecture: April 28, 2021

www.stanford.edu/class/ee392b


Industrial AI and Analytics Business

Panel led by Colin Kessinger, Managing Director, E2E Analytics, Accenture AI, Accenture

Bios

Colin Kessinger (Managing Director – E2E Analytics, part of Accenture AI) Colin has spent the last 20 years researching, designing, selling, and implementing supply chain solutions. He is the CEO and Managing director of E2E Analytics, a boutique supply chain and analytics consulting firm, acquired by Accenture in 2021. Also, Colin is a Lecturer at Stanford in Manufacturing Strategy. Colin holds B.Sc. and M.Eng. degrees in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell University, and a PhD in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University.

Jim Miller (Chief Technology Officer – Wayfair) Jim is a former CEO, CTO, Google executive, and Amazon executive. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer, Wayfair, where he served as a member of the Board of Directors for 3+ years before leaving to take the CTO role.   Jim is currently on the Board of Directors of ITRenew, Brambles Limited, and The RealReal.   Jim is a member of the Technical Advisory Network at the Boston Consulting Group.  He is a member of the MIT Corporation.  Additionally, he is an Advisor and multiple early-stage, mid-stage and public companies, venture capital firms, and private equity firms.  As the CTO of Wayfair, he has responsibility for a team of 4500 employees consisting of software engineers, product managers, UX/UI design, and data scientists.  He has functional responsibility for all of the technology and applications that power Wayfair.  Additionally, he has responsibility for a multi-hundred person data science team. Jim was Chief Executive Officer of Arevo Inc.  In this role, he was responsibile for commercializing and ramping Arevo’s continuous carbon fiber 3D deposition technology and fabrication processes. Prior to this role, Jim was Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Google. In this role, he had responsibility for global operations, planning, supply chain and new product introduction for Google’s Cloud infrastructure and Google Fiber.  Additionally, he was responsible for Google Energy, LLC and Corporate & Social Responsibility.  He served as an Advisor for many of Google’s new initiatives in GoogleX, Consumer Hardware and Verily/Google Life Sciences. Prior to joining Google in 2010, Jim worked with leading companies in electronics, networking, clean tech, communications technology, manufacturing, and consumer services. His expertise in supply chain was honed at Amazon.com, Cisco, First Solar, Sanmina-SCI Corporation, IBM Corporation, Intel, and Sierra Crest Consulting. Jim has a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University, a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master’s Degree in Management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a “MIT Leaders for Manufacturing” Fellow.

Paritosh Desai (Senior Director of Engineering at Google) Paritosh is currently a Senior Director of Engineering at Google, previously he served as Chief Data and Analytics officer for Target. Paritosh is interested in creating new business value by identifying and solving hard and important problems -- usually by building (financially viable) Products based upon new Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques coupled with large-scale distributed computing technologies. This includes providing Product vision, building Data Science & Engineering capabilities and organizations, and effective management & delivery. Paritosh did oversee development of multiple data-science products that spans various domains -- Retail, Supply Chain, Marketing, Information Security, iOT, Talent/HR, and encompassing multiple Data Science approaches including Statistical and Machine Learning, AI and Deep Learning, Stochastic Optimization and Control, and more! These products employ advanced techniques such as Tensor and Matrix Factorization, Complex Neural Network Architectures, Bayesian learning methods etc. He created and scaled multiple data science and analytics organizations (multi-geography) -- scores of agile/product teams and hundreds of team members.

Abstract

Colin Kessinger will lead an exciting panel discussion with three very experienced senior executives, who have spent decades in developing real-world industry applications with the use of advanced analytics, data science and machine learning at scale in large corporations. The discussions topics will explore how Supply Chain Operations have used advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to help companies drive better business results. The panel will also discuss topics such as separating the hype from actual results, most common use-cases in their respective industries, current challenges in scaling products and teams, and will also share their thoughts on future vision/trends. The panel will also help students understand the different approaches students and how to be prepared to embark on a journey towards a career in this space.

Lecture Notes

Video recording of the lecture

Presentation by Accenture panel pdf