Review Article

Application of Machine Learning in Supply Chain Management: A Comprehensive Overview of the Main Areas

Table 1

Frequently used ML algorithms.

Type of learningAlgorithmDescription

Supervised learningDecision treeUsing related values, decision trees (DTs) will categorize attributes in different groups which can be applied for classification purposes [31].
Naïve BayesNaïve Bayes can be best applied to cluster and classify objects [32].
Support vector machineWorking on the margin calculations, support vector machine (SVM) can be best applied for classification purposes [33].
K-nearest neighborIn K-nearest neighbor (KNN), the learner usually uses the training data. When the test data are introduced to the learner, it compares both the data. Here, K most correlated data are taken from a training set. The majority of K is taken which serves as the new class for the test data [34].
Supervised neural networkUsing supervised neural network (SNN), the predicted output and actual output will be compared, and according to the identified error, the parameters will be modified and considered as the input into the neural network again [15].

Unsupervised learningK-means clusteringUsing similarity of the clusters of data,K-means (KM) clustering algorithm definesK clusters in which the center of the clusters is the mean of the values [35].
Principal component analysisPrincipal component analysis (PCA) can provide faster and easier computations as it reduces the dimension of the data [34].
Unsupervised neural networkUnsupervised neural network (UNN) categorizes data based on their similarities. Since the output is unknown, UNN considers the correlations between different inputs and categorizes them into different groups [15].

Semisupervised learningSelf-trainingSelf-training first classifies using labeled data, and then unlabeled data are used as inputs [15].
Transductive support vector machineBeing an extension of SVM, transductive support vector machine (TSVM) considers both labeled and unlabeled data to make sure the margin is maximized between them [15].

Ensemble learningBoostingBoosting uses two sorts of variables, namely, weak learners and strong learners. By grouping weak learners and converting them to strong learners, it aims to decrease bias and variances [36].
BaggingBagging is another tool which can be applied to decrease variances and increase the accuracy and stability of ML [37].