Generative AI in supply chain

When new technology generates a hype cycle, business leaders face a tricky conundrum of balancing FOMO (fear of missing out), with a more measured corporate approach. Members of the IBM CSCO Think Circle recently focused their discussion on generative AI – the latest technology in the hype cycle – which has impacted global society with unprecedented speed, scope and scale. With so much chatter and so little concrete evidence of value, the Thinkers shared sentiments, potential use cases, and possible business benefits generative AI might deliver to supply chain operations. The group also highlighted the necessary guardrails they would like to see in place for enterprises to take full advantage of this technology that now feels inescapable.

“Generative AI accelerates discovery. So, discovery becomes the competitive advantage.”

The Thinkers see three main areas where generative AI can deliver results, and most are already testing, trialing, and experimenting with presentation, trend papers, lessons learned - concerns with the technology in some ways.

1. In the area of supply chain support, some organizations are experimenting with task automation in human resources functions and customer and employee call centers. They described using generative AI to speed up basic coding.

“Data engineering and programming are huge accelerators. We have seen 90% improvement in speed of coding. With AI, we could take something that can take three months down to a few hours and get real time analytics.”

2. In core supply chain functions, fewer organizations have trialed specific use cases, but the Thinkers identified several potential benefits, such as leveraging ERP tools to drive end-to-end decision support, issue management, and selection of next best action.

“With our control towers, we can pinpoint where issues are – generative AI will help drive decision making faster by augmenting our digital twins to understand what is happening in our supply chain”.

3. And some of the most significant future generative AI value can likely come from global sharing of AI-generated intelligence across industry and business.

“Generative AI technology could play a very interesting role in sustainability if it becomes the platform for collaboration rather than competition.”

As they experiment and test, they also acknowledge the need for guardrails and governance. All of the Thinkers believe their organizations will use multiple types of AI – machine learning, automation, generative intelligence and others – across disparate legacy systems. They stressed being practical and pragmatic; the consensus was to “not run before we can walk.”