Top 12 Supply Chain AI Use Cases in 2024

AI In Supply Chain: Top Use Cases Of AI In Supply Chain Management USM

For the integration to be successful, the business must have a development team possessing the necessary skills. These limitations can result in a complete overhaul of a company’s supply chain management architecture or employee base. H2O AI uses machine learning algorithms to forecast customer demand, enabling businesses to stock up when needed. This is a popular use case for machine learning to help intelligently and automatically cluster various type of data such as products, customers, and attributes to accelerate and enhance decision making. Companies can leverage clustering and segmentation together with machine learning algorithms to establish relationships and find contextual information that can be used to create strategies. An example is the clustering of like products to understand halo or cannibalization impact.

If you’re ready to explore the transformative potential of AI in supply chain management, contact Inoxoft today. Our team of experts is ready to assist you in leveraging AI technologies to optimize your supply chain processes and drive business success. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data from various sources, enabling businesses to trace the origin of raw materials, monitor supplier practices, and ensure compliance with ethical standards. By leveraging AI, companies can ensure responsible sourcing, reduce environmental impact, and enhance stakeholder trust. By analyzing historical data and external factors, such as weather patterns or political events, AI algorithms can generate risk scores or probabilities for different scenarios. This information can help supply chain managers prioritize their risk mitigation efforts and allocate resources effectively.

AI’s Power to Transform: 4 Key Strengths for Supply Chain Management

As we look ahead to the future of AI in supply chain, we see a world of possibilities. By doing so, AI/ML experts ensure the success of your AI for the supply chain optimization and implementation. They take the necessary steps to pilot-test your AI for the supply chain solution and reap the benefits of a streamlined supply chain.

• They have already experienced increased operational efficiencies and safe working standards in the warehouses.
• Generative AI adds simplicity to interactions throughout tech-enabled planning efforts.
• AI may assist a ship captain with docking a vessel at the pier, monitoring risks of collision or grounding, handling cargo operations that require a high level of precision, and much more.
• This so-called “bullwhip effect” has been known for decades, but now the data and technology are available to finally do something about it.
• The usage of artificial intelligence in the supply chain is here to stay and will make massive waves in the upcoming years.

They installed an Intelligent Appointment Scheduler in 26 warehouses to automate the truck appointment process. The predictive AI solution reduced warehouse dock congestion, reduced turnaround time by 15%, and improved customer service by 86%. Symbotic builds and designs AI-powered robots to help businesses automate their workflows.

Accelerating Supply Chain Success with AI in Supply Chains & Logistics

The end-to-end custom implementation of a solution that interprets data provides visualization and enables custom automated actions to streamline logistics and supply chain networks is essential to take SCM to the next level. As technologies such as digital twins, machine learning (ML) and the internet of things (IoT) continue to mature and proliferate, companies everywhere can begin to do things never before possible. However, historical data can help you bridge the gap between your insights and accurate forecasting by building demand forecast models. Statistical models allow you to better anticipate the rise and fall in demand and negotiate with your suppliers and distributors accordingly.

Fortunately, AI offers innovative solutions that can significantly enhance security measures, mitigate risks, and protect the integrity of the supply chain. Inventory management and its transformation with AI begins with data analytics that reveals demand patterns that can help with demand forecasting and inventory planning. Additionally, robotics companies are constantly working on developing new and improving the existing solutions, so we can definitely see the proliferation of supply chain automation examples in the future. Tesla has just released a new robot that is capable of “walking slowly and picking up stuff,” which can be extremely helpful in warehouse management and beyond.

For instance, the Railcar Inspection Portal (RIP) solution from Duos Technologies, a provider of machine vision and AI that analyzes fast moving vehicles, rolled out its latest railcar AI detection model. AI’s ability to spot the rare, but costly, anomaly also applies to equipment used in the supply chain, from materials handling systems to tractor-trailers to railcars. Its dynamic warehouse plans are injected into the WMS to optimize activities based on constraints and enable sites to run optimally.

The method negates the need for a handheld device (such as RF scanners), which frees up a picker to be more focused on the task at hand. Then, it relays all the necessary information to the warehouse worker (such as the quantity needed for an item), before guiding them along the right path so that they can either pick out a product or store one away. Pick-by-voice (also referred to as voice-directed warehouse procedures) combines mobile headsets with speech recognition software to determine the best pick paths on a warehouse floor. However, employing AGVs makes most sense if you have a large warehouse environment with lots of space. If your warehouse is more cramped and there’s a lot of human traffic, AGVs are much less useful. Goods-to-Person (GTP) is a type of automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) in which items are delivered to or retrieved from specific storage locations by automated vehicles called shuttles.

Remarkable Real-world examples of AI in the Supply Chain

It means a model should consider not only a sequence of a planned activity but also a way they are connected together within the supply chains. Technology can help with this process by providing an AI solution that can learn from historical facts and make predictions about future events. ML models can do a great job finding patterns within a massive amount of data that may be used as actionable insights or statistics to run simulations for various scenarios. They can be optimized for multiple targets like cost-effectiveness, timely deliveries, warehouse space reduction, or a mix of all, depending on the needs of particular business specifics.

The number of potential machine learning use cases in logistics varies depending on your scope of operations. Larger businesses might require fleet and inventory management automation, while small operators can only use GPS tracking systems. Transportation management software powered by real-time data analytics lets logistics businesses plan routes based on traffic and weather conditions.

Combining the Old With the New: Integration With Legacy Systems

The data collected from these devices can be analyzed in real-time using AI algorithms to provide visibility into inventory levels, shipping schedules, and delivery times. This information can be used to reduce transportation costs and improve delivery times. With the advent of e-commerce and the increasing pace of business, demand patterns can change rapidly. AI can incorporate real-time data feeds from a variety of sources, such as social media, marketplaces, and weather forecasts, to provide up-to-date demand forecasts. This enables businesses to respond quickly to shifting demand patterns, adjust production plans, and ensure optimal inventory levels, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and minimizing costs.

The framework comprises monitoring agents, communication agents, process planning agents, scheduling agents, research bots, and collaboration tools. ‘Data-driven decision making for supply chain networks with agent-based computational experiment’ paper proposes a four-dimensional flow model to fulfill data requirements for supply chain decisions. Here, agents are employed in a computational experiment to generate a comprehensive operational dataset of a supply chain. Think about augmenting your manufacturing, production, packaging, supply, storage, transportation, and logistics departments with a high level of transparency and security. Make your supply chain future-ready by introducing indispensable techniques that honour the need of the hour and optimize the business fully.

Run your data operations on a single, unified platform.

In many supply chain industries, these products or parts can be defined using multiple characteristics that take a range of values. Also, in many cases, products and parts are also phased-in and phased-out regularly, which can cause proliferation leading to uncertainties and the bullwhip-effects up and down the supply chain. According to McKinsey, 61% of manufacturing executives report decreased costs, and 53% report increased revenues as a direct result of introducing AI in the supply chain. Some of the high impact areas in supply chain management include planning and scheduling, forecasting, spend analytics, logistics network optimization and more, further discussed below. This information enables companies to make fast decisions, so they don’t have to wait till month or quarter-end to find out how much stock they have at each location. When planning the delivery of goods on particular days and times, supply chain scheduling plays an important role.

By creating synthetic datasets, AI can learn from its mistakes and improve its accuracy and performance over time. AI can be used to develop real-time tracking and visibility platforms, providing customers with up-to-date information about their orders. AI-driven trackers can be used to monitor incoming shipments, detect potential delays, and automatically notify customers about the status of their orders. When cooperating with a targeted proteomics company, our Research and Development was asked to implement biomaterial processing and analysis through AI and ML integration. This proactive approach improves efficiency and asset lifespan, reducing operational disruptions and costs.

By utilizing ML in the supply chain, businesses can anticipate and proactively mitigate challenges. For example, UPS — a leading shipping company — has employed machine learning and artificial intelligence to optimize its package delivery operations. This allows UPS to allocate resources efficiently, reducing delays and improving customer satisfaction. Some leading market solutions include IBM Watson Supply Chain Insights and SAP Supply Chain.

If the products have some defects, it becomes easy to detect them before they reach the customers. Machine learning (a subset of AI) identifies patterns in historical data to make predictions. This guide contains real-world applications that can improve operations and increase margin up and down the supply chain. The data can be compared to the actual content of the containers (this information is obtained from radiography images).

Read more about Top 3 AI Use Cases for Supply Chain Optimization here.