6 Applications of Artificial Intelligence for the Supply Chain.

Once thought to be a concept only sci-fi movies could produce, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a topic of our mainstreams and everydays.

The potential of AI enhancing everyday business activities and strategies hasn’t just sparked the interest of people and organizations globally, but has initiated rapid implementation.

But, what is AI?

Artificial Intelligence is an intelligence displayed by machines, in which, learning and action-based capabilities mimic autonomy rather than process-oriented intelligence.

The simplest way to understand the potential application of AI is to clearly define it’s potential value-added.

Introduced by Gartner Analyst, Noha Tohamy, at Gartner’s Supply Chain Executive Conference, AI was broken down into two categories:

• “Augmentation: AI, which assists humans with their day-to-day tasks, personally or commercially without having complete control of the output. Such Artificial Intelligence is used in Virtual Assistant, Data analysis, software solutions; where they are mainly used to reduce errors due to human bias.
• Automation: AI, which works completely autonomously in any field without the need for any human intervention. For example, robots performing key process steps in manufacturing plants” (arkieva.com 2017).

Enhancing Productivity and Profits.

Understanding these two categories of AI capacities is important for future implementation of AI into business work tools. In particular, the application of AI into Supply Chain related-tasks holds high potential for boosting top-line and bottom-line value.

Previous studies, by the Tungsten Network, have suggested that valuable time and money is wasted on trivial supply chain related-tasks that are conducted operationally by humans.

“Businesses estimate they spend on average per week around 55 hours doing manual, paper-based processes and checks; 39 hours chasing invoice exceptions, discrepancies and errors and 23 hours responding to supplier inquiries” (mhlnews.com 2017).

This loss- has been equated to around 6500 hours, during the work year, that businesses are throwing away by processing papers, fixing purchase orders and replying to suppliers.

Imagine if a business could automate such tasks that are (more or less) ‘wasting time’.

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