This month we are proud to highlight another valued member of the Wisconsin School of Business’ MS in Business Analytics faculty team, Enno Siemsen! From being named the Patrick A. Thiele Distinguished Chair in Business to publishing an extensive array of research and authoring Demand Forecasting for Managers, Enno’s journey is both insightful and inspiring. Enno’s current involvement with the MSBA program is teaching a course on machine learning for business analytics.
Enno began his career journey doing his undergraduate studies in Germany prior to completing his PhD in Operations, Technology and Innovation Management at UNC. He has been in academia ever since, working as a professor at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota before joining the Wisconsin School of Business where he has served as the Associate Dean for the MBA and Masters Programs and a professor in the operations and information management department.
Ongoing Exploration
Fostering a desire for continuous discovery, Enno has engaged in an impressive collection of research. “I spot things that are interesting and going right or wrong in society and then I kind of delve deeper into them,” Enno says of his work. Blending aspects from his two educational experiences, Enno has explored both qualitative and quantitative research topics, ranging from statistical modeling to the psychology behind decision making. In a broad lens, he shares the three topics that have comprised most of his research focus. His first focus was on forecasting and related decision making, including how people interpret time series data compared to how it should be interpreted. He then served as a contractor for the FDA investigating quality issues and recalls in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Enno shares his most recent focus as being on investigating the use of augmented reality in the manufacturing process. “I’ve always been a person who’s been very open to exploring very, very different research topics,” Enno notes on his diverse background.
Sharing Expertise to Develop Ethical Leaders
This comprehensive perspective contributes to the expertise Enno can share with students in the classroom each day. This semester Enno had his work on comparing demand forecasting models and their carbon emissions published. Traditionally, time series models have dominated the analysis of granular data, such as daily product sales. Recently machine learning models, specifically boosting models, have become a more prominent tool. As found in Enno’s research, although these two approaches have very similar accuracy outcomes, there is a huge difference in computing time. This results in the machine learning models contributing to a huge increase in carbon footprint, equivalent to the carbon emissions of 80,000 cars per year. Bringing insights like these to the classroom helps expand the perspective of the MSBA students and contributes to the development of ethical leaders who are prepared to advocate for sustainable business practices upon entering the industry.
Embracing and Adapting
Given the nature of the industry, new insights and developments emerge each month requiring analysts to adapt their toolboxes and problem solve. “My goal is really to empower them to not be afraid of these somewhat complex but also very exciting modern techniques and artificial intelligence,” Enno says on his approach to preparing students to enter the data realm. Broadly, his advice is to become very comfortable learning new tools and be willing to stay adaptive. Taking advantage of things like generative AI, new models and methods of embedding texts and audio means knowing how to think strategically and separate noise from usefulness. To do this, Enno encourages students to continue their learning on a regular basis and work with the models that companies post. “I’m incredibly thrilled that so much of this is actually quite open and not happening behind corporate walls, but right out there on websites you can access.” Embracing these opportunities demonstrates a desire to excel in the industry and encompasses Enno’s passion for being a lifelong learner.
Time series research: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01605682.2024.2421339#abstract
Augmented reality research: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/msom.2021.1070
Book: https://dfep.netlify.app/