Max Tegmark, President of the Future of Life Institute once quoted “Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence, so amplifying our human intelligence with artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential of helping civilization flourish like never before - as long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial”. Indeed AI has been changing the way we used to do a particular job a few years ago. With the continuous advancement in technology, AI has become an integral part of our everyday lives. Also, as AI continues to integrate into our factories, offices, businesses and operations, the time is not far when it will streamline and enrich processes to such an extent that companies using AI will get better positioned in the market for long-term growth than those who don’t.

Nowadays, AI is influencing nearly every facet of our lives to help improve efficiencies and augment our human capabilities. It is no longer the latest technology or topic of amazement; it is already here and enabling revolutionary transformations across industries. Similar is the situation with the supply chain industry, where it is taking up the pace when it comes to supply chain management. As per a number of executives from the industry, this field is expected to witness a more significant transformation in the coming future. Also, according to Accenture’s Technology Vision survey spanning 11 countries and 12 industries, 70 percent of corporate executives said they are significantly increasing investments in AI. Though the industry worldwide is already leveraging AI-enabled technology to drive higher revenues and achieve improved efficiency, in India, it is expected that this transformation will see the industry valuation double in the next couple of years.

But, how exactly can AI bring transformation into the industry?
The use of AI in supply chains will ultimately result in spawning an ecosystem where supply chains link themselves with each other enabling seamless flow of products and information from one end to the other. Here are some of the instances where AI is already driving changes:

AI in manufacturing & supply chain automation: AI is changing the traditional way in which companies are operating. One such company is Siemen that has automated some of its production lines in its ‘lights out’ manufacturing plant to a point where the operations can be handled unsupervised for several weeks. This can simply result in manufacturing of highly customized products.

AI in logistics & warehousing: Logistics function can undergo a fundamental change as AI gets deployed to handle domestic & international movement of goods. DHL, the German-logistic company has stated that its use of AI-based autonomous forklifts is ‘reaching a level of maturity’ in warehouse operations. The next step would be driverless autonomous vehicles undertaking goods delivery operations.

AI in supplier management and customer service: IPsoft’s AI platform, Amelia automates work knowledge and is able to speak to the customers in more than 20 languages. This technology has drastically improved the

supplier management and customer service of the organization.

The above-mentioned examples are few of the many that provide a glance of the uses as well as the importance of AI in the supply chain industry. Though, there are a number of usage of AI in this industry, let’s have a look at some of the cutting-edge innovations in the application of AI in the supply chain.

AI-Enabled Transformations
AI-based contextual intelligence provided by technology such as Intelligent Robotic Sorting, AI-powered Visual Inspection and more are transforming warehouse management, shipping, tracking, logistics, packaging and so on worldwide. AI also offers supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning technologies are facilitating real-time decision-making, enhanced fraud detection, and predictive insights. AI-led automation in the form of self-driving forklifts, automated sorting, self-managing intelligent inventory systems, autonomous/ driverless ground vehicles and others are revolutionizing warehousing, logistics, distribution, and inventory management for various companies. Intelligent software solutions are enabling better supplier selection, product design, audits, evaluations, production planning, B2B sourcing, and more.

Though the organization have already realized the importance of AI in their business processes, and many of them are already leveraging it to get the most for their business. There are also some young tech startups and SaaS companies who leveraged the power of AI to build add-ons to supply chain and logistics management solutions for businesses through AI-based solutions during the recent lockdown period. For instance, LogiNext, a logistics and field service management company that offers transportation Software as a Service (SaaS) with its end-to-end logistics management platform backed by AI algorithms saw higher requirements for in-built safety measures in the pandemic. “We witnessed huge demand and traction for driver safety and delivery tracking notifications among clients. We also tweaked the platform to ensure that customers have maximum information about the drivers as well as ways to minimize contact with delivery persons,” stated Dhruvil Sanghvi, CEO, LogiNext. LogiNext’s platform enables automated order management, predictive capacity planning, real-time route optimization, dispatch automation, post-delivery processing and analytics of B2B transportation or B2C delivery business among others. Another Indian supply chain optimization startup Locus.sh stated automatic updating of routes depending on whether the region has been marked a red-alert zone, made logistics much safer. Locus offers an AI platform that companies can use to automate decision with solutions for route optimization, and fleet tracking insights and analytics solution, among others.

The Future
Even organizations like Jio & Facebook are collaborating to build a platform that will connect retailers to end consumers via Whatsapp, there is still a need for larger businesses covering huge areas to consolidate inventory and delivery with minimum manpower. Recently, Microsoft’s venture fund arm invested in another Indian logistics SaaS platform Fareye, showing the opportunity that these businesses stand to tap across millions of small retailers and businesses in the country.

As AI continues to learn new things which expand its capabilities, it is quickly becoming one of the best innovations of our time. With recent breakthroughs in technologies like Big Data and Machine Learning Algorithms, in the future, AI is said to come up with unusual solutions in the supply chain, logistics and transportation industries.