Dr. Michael Watson runs his own firm OpEx Analytics, is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, is co-author of books on supply chain network design and managerial analytics, and is a regular guest columnist for SCDigest, among other accomplishments.

So when we're looking for some thoughts on supply chain analytics of any sort, we go straight to Dr. Watson, who helped us this week with thoughts on market trends so far in 2017 around analytics.

Watson calls out three, in this fast-paced video discussion with SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore: "artificial intelligence" being used now as an umbrella term for almost any analytics tool whether it is really AI or not; a big focus on "sensor-based" analytics; and a preference by younger data scientistics for more powerful open source tookls than the standards of Excel and Access - a trend which has implications for supply chain managers.

Very good stuff, as always from Dr. Watson.

Please watch this short clip, excerpted from our weekly supply chain video news broadcast from our Supply Chain Television Channel and CSCMP.