A recent survey, conducted by Forbes Insights, SAS, Intel and Accenture, finds 36 per cent of companies are adding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to their logistics and supply chain operations with another 28 per cent planning to do so.
The challenge with supply chains has been their opaqueness. After all, they involve a lot of moving parts, each run by different entities across different continents using different systems. Fred Laluyaux, CEO of Aera Technology, commented that supply chains remain far from the ideal of real-time visibility across the supply chain operations, hence, data-driven, accurate decisions. This continues to be the case despite years of implementations of transactional and analytic systems for supply chain operations.
Add one more element to the pressures of supply chains – the Amazon effect. Companies really need to tighten up their processes to the point where moving products from factories to warehouses to distributors to customers’ doorsteps is quick, visible and painless.