Dive Brief:
- The prevalence of Artificial intelligence (AI) within supply chains is growing, according to Gartner expert Noha Tohamy, Supply Chain Quarterly reported last week.
- AI exists within two categories according to Tohamy. First is augmentation, in which technology assists humans by eliminating most pre-existing bias, ensuring better decision making. Second is automation, in which technology freely arrives at decisions, with more speed and accuracy than humans.
- Main areas of AI expertise include identifying and mitigating risk exposure by using data culled from numerous sources; demand sensing and shaping, where consumer data is used to influence product type, and supply chain planning, in which AI assesses planning decisions to recognize and repair glitches within the planning stream faster than any human.
Dive Insight:
A recent IFS Digital Change Survey noted that U.S. companies are transforming digitally by providing advanced training to current employees (61%); investing digitally (46%); and seeking additional external digital talent (39%).
As a result of the drive toward internal process efficiency, Big Data, ERP and IoT are the foremost investments with Big Data and analytics at 46%, enterprise resource planning at 41%, and IoT at 37%.
Servitization, or the process of developing service and solution capabilities meant to supplement current product offerings are working as a competitive advantage for the U.S. Manufacturers are bounding ahead in servitatization, leaving global competitors behind. In fact, 40% of North American manufacturers state that servitization is already paying dividends, whereas only 25% of global manufacturers have achieved similar results.
However, there are delays. North American respondents to the IFS survey believe that the top barriers inhibiting digital progression are “aversion to change” (42%); “security threats/concerns” (39%), and "absence of the right organizational and governance model (38%).