Forecasting in a business setting is usually done in support of planning activities and generally come under 3 types. Operational Forecasting – This type of forecasting is done for timelines that fall within the next few days or weeks, sometimes hour by hour or even day by day. They are generally done for short term operational scheduling for customer service, carrying out inventory management, warehousing well as the transportation sector, Tactical Forecasting – This type of forecasting is carried out for time periods that cover several months or quarters and up to several years. It is carried out for tactical planning for the sales, marketing, production, distribution, and labor planning sectors. Strategic Forecasting – This type of forecasting is done to support strategic planning and are carried out for timelines that occur over many years. They are most often applied to the business planning and investment as well as capital planning sectors. There are 4 general tech...
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Scenario Planning Scenario planning is a structured process that is used to develop alternate viewpoints about an organization’s potential future, by scrutinizing key uncertainties that have the potential to alter the business landscape. These scenarios are usually given in a sequence of event format by describing the proposed future in a story-like manner but one that would be relevant to the business’s managers. Scenarios are not focused on accurately foretelling the future, they are primarily concerned with changing the way of thinking and providing a series of stories which draws in the attention to areas that would not have been scrutinized. “The focus is not on forecasting the future, or fully characterizing key uncertainties in terms of probabilities, but on bounding the uncertainty range and creating frameworks for discussion.” (Schoemaker, 2016). Scenarios are more likely to be used when, uncertainty is high, when there has historically been too many bli...
White Hydrogen and its potential benefits What is white hydrogen? The term white hydrogen refers to the process by which hydrogen is generated and the potential effect it can have on the environment form the production or extraction process. “Hydrogen, often referred to by different colors, represents various production methods and environmental impacts”. ( Boyle, Louise 2023 ). This has given rise to what is called the Hydrogen Spectrum. The Hydrogen spectrum is so called due to allocation of different colors to the hydrogen generation or extraction method that is representative of its potential negative impact to the environment. This spectrum ranges from brown to green, with the color green being the technology or process which would result in the least negative affect to the environment. Meaning of the colors The Hydrogen spectrum is primarily made up of the following colors – gray, brown, blue, green and white. Gray hydrogen refers to the process of e...
Delphi technique The Delphi technique is a coordinated group interaction process used for forecasting and decision making. It is carried out by grouping remote experts into panels and using questionnaires instead of face-to-face meetings. The main idea behind the Delphi technique is to control the indirect interaction between experts and manage the tendency for expert judgement to converge as the process goes on. “In essence, Delphi is a vehicle and a method for informed consensus-building within a group with respect to a complex problem by using a series of questionnaires delivered in multiple iterations to collect data from a panel of selected participants – “panellists”.” (Fink-Hafner et al., 2019). There are no set number of members/experts that should be used to create the panel. But panels with fewer than 10 members and those with over 100 are rare. Typically, the group of participants usually number between 10 and 100 experts. Somes of the advantages of using ...
Generative AI Personalized learning The diagram shows how Generative AI would facilitate personalized learning. Using Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence it would take in historical education material, combine that with the known learning process of the individual along with specified learning topics to provide and individual with a sequence of personalized learning material, with learning incentives curated for the unique individual along with recommendations for lifelong learning and a learning network.
ICS/SCADA/OT Security
I have worked with overhead power, underground power, substation maintenance, wireless communications to substations, and networking of the system protection devices at substations. All this before landing in my present role of cyber security for production devices in the Water/Wastewater space. Even though this may seem like a wide, varied, and disjointed work history, there is a common thread through it all. And that is something called SCADA – Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. The secure flow of this process has taken on greater precedence after the multiple cyber-attacks on the Ukraine power system as well as the more recent compromise of the Water plant in Oldsmar Florida. And as such, it is a good time to be in the Water/Wastewater space as it tries to catch up to the more established cyber posture that is already entrenched in the power industry. It is enjoyable being in the middle of the cyber security awakening change period as it happens for the operational technology...