Mathieu Linder, corporate vice president of industry strategies in the product management group of Blue Yonder, discusses the current state of artificial intelligence in supply chain management, and how it will evolve and improve in the years to come. 

AI’s biggest impact on the supply chain at the moment is in improving the efficiency of planners and the decisions they make, Linder says.

In the past, forecasts were based on shipment history — just one small slice of the available data. Now, with AI, planners can take into account a host of additional factors, including weather and global economic trends.

AI has been around in name for decades. The difference today lies in access to a wider range of data and computing power, Linder says. The result is much greater forecasting accuracy. What’s more, the AI model is constantly learning, and improving in the effectiveness of its conclusions.

As it becomes adopted by supply chain organizations, AI changes the skills that workers must have in order to work with it. To start, Linder says, experienced planners must “unlearn” some of the processes on which they depended in the past, such as spreadsheets and legacy technologies.

When it comes to new hires, younger job candidates are likely to already possess the skills needed for working with AI, Linder says. For them, “onboarding into AI is going to be super simple.” Adaption will be more challenging for the older generation, who will require a level of reskilling that moves them away from manual processes. 

In its current form, AI is being oversold to a certain extent, Linder says. That’s especially the case with generative AI, which still makes egregious errors in its conclusions. But Linder sees the AI model growing in ability and scale in the years to come. “The maturity journey is going to be huge for organizations,” he says.