Guest Blog courtesy of David Steven Jacoby Author of RETOOLING AMERICA: For AI-Driven Supply Chains By 2030 most supply chain activities will be 70-80% AI-driven. Repetitive events such as requisitioning, order management, contracting, payment, accounting and recurring sourcing events will be triggered and executed by algorithms.

Supply chain risk will be managed smarter than today. Strategic, periodic activities such as supply chain network design and strategic supplier selection will remain in the capable hands of managers, but overall, we will continue to see more and “smarter” (cognitive) automation; with robotic process automation (RPA) and AI increasingly blending.

Companies will need to develop artificial intelligence and robotic solutions to sense and respond to activity at the edge of supply chain boundaries. They will need AI to enhance demand planning and management (learning supply-demand balancing), contracting and order management (smart contracting and order management: establishing complete traceability), manufacturing (digital twins and supply chain control towers: replicating the physical factory), and engaging customers continuously (planting & watering the money tree). They will need robotic solutions in the fields of additive manufacturing (to customize production), in warehouses (to standardize delivery chains), in drone delivery (to deliver anywhere, anytime), and in last-km/m/cm delivery (for reliable unmanned delivery).

Many of these functional smart automations will require contextual information from field operations. The enabling technology will often include handheld devices scanning software middleware, and layers of cybersecurity. artificial will be essential in reading and establishing decision logic to process countless permutations of status into a finite number of optimal workflow routes. Applications such as ViziApps, which are device agnostic, will serve as glue to tie information at the edge to material handling, billing, and other systems that reside in a more predictable environment. Since ViziApps sits behind the company firewall it is a universal platform that plugs in almost immediately, compared to the 12+ month queue that conventional IT projects typically suffer in large enterprises. No surprise, then, that many companies are using it as a test bed for customizations to their enterprise systems, as well as a way to quickly embed local customizations.

As a result, supply chain management will increasingly become a matter of working with internal and external tech partners to manage, improve and maintain algorithms. A new category of “citizen data analysts” will manage in data governance, data interpretation, data privacy and algorithmic bias detection and remediation. Similarly, a new breed of “citizen developers” will build automation and data collection and reporting tools. Today’s middle layer of associates who handle jobs in job functions traditionally associated with supply chain management, such as procurement, production control, logistics, demand forecasting, and customer service will be largely replaced by smart automation and AI. Managers will focus more on leveraging RPA and AI for execution, and Directors will spend more time with internal and external partners while the internal operations are on autopilot, thanks to automation.

In summary, the combination of AI, handheld software, citizen analysts and developers, and ViziApps is allowing companies with extensive field operations to rapidly take advantage of the power of AI in the supply chain.