Supply chain leaders need both an artificial intelligence-enabled command center and a control tower, says Harsh Koppula, chief operating officer and co-founder of TADA.

Supply chain technology, built on yesterday’s platforms, are siloed, fragmented and don’t connect horizontally across the end-to-end supply chain, Koppula says. That lends local functionality but doesn't really give a view into what's happening now. Coupled with greater disruption today, it results in more volatility.

“The systems were just not set up to deal with that,” Koppula says. “People have a very limited range of visibility to information, so they cannot respond as fast in a world where rapid response is key.” 

Relying solely on control towers is to rely on yesterday’s technology, Koppula says. In fact, companies need both control towers and command centers enabled by AI. “You need specific control towers,” he says. “You might have one, let's say for procurement, or you might have a control tower for planning or for a factory or a set of factories. But the thing that threads it together and keeps you in charge of your supply chain is a command-centric capability.” 

Command capability across the end-to-end supply chain, not just within one’s organization but with upstream suppliers and downstream distributors, agents and customers, doesn’t exist in most companies. Koppula analogizes the distinction between control towers and command capability to a battlefield. Control towers are for operational command of specific areas. Command capability gives a “general” visibility to the entire theatre.

Koppula says an AI-enabled digital twin ensures that upstream and downstream activities work according to one’s business strategy. Problems will occur at some point, and when they do, “You have to be able to act on them intelligently. And that's what a command capability allows you to do.”

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