Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Supply Chain Management

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Supply chain management forms one of the important branches of operations management. It involves flow of raw materials, inventory, goods, and information in an efficient manner. There is a lot of hype about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Supply Chain Management (SCM) these days due to its huge potential. AI is the shrewdness displayed by machines in making decisions. Often people confuse AI with automation. However both are completely different concepts. Automation is a hardware or software which is capable of doing repetitive things on its own whereas AI takes decisions on the basis of situations. Automation may or may not be based on Artificial Intelligence.
We are living in a highly connected world where lot of data is being generated every minute and this big data gives us …show more content…

AI systems can be employed to scan trillions of data records, collect appropriate information from market network, identify trend, seasonality or cyclicity and forecast consumer demand more precisely. This can help to enhance flexibility across smart chains. The time is not far when AI chat bots will take customer orders, negotiate contracts with vendors or suppliers, and interact with client. AI system can automatically identify customer priority established on their purchase trends. The AI based systems can generate algorithms by itself depending on distinct nature of business operations.
There is lot of unstructured data present around in any supply chain management. This data can be processed through machine learning algorithms to obtain useful insights and information. Predictive supply chain and Big Data will help organisations to move away from ‘guess work’ in making estimates on movement of materials. This will lead to more optimized inventory management, better analysis of aggregate distribution cost per unit and more adaptable shipping procurement

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