“Today’s supply chains simply cannot be managed without AI,” Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels wrote in Homeland Security Today. “The data and analysis required is too cost-, time- and labor-intensive for any company or government to bear.”
Adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded in the past year, revolutionizing many industries and their supply chains. Use of the technology is expected to see an annual growth rate of 37% from 2023 to 2030, as reported by Grand View Research.
[See which factors will be key for resilience in 2024 in our new report,
Supply Chain Resilience: 6 Factors to Watch for in 2024.]
AI Use Cases for Supply Chains Expand
AI is already being successfully deployed for supply chain logistics acceleration, freight tracking and fuel efficiency. More AI use cases and capabilities will continue to mushroom this year, particularly as more companies create digital twins of supply chains for predictive modeling.
“I think that we’re starting to realize the need for better, big-data architectures and infrastructures beyond what historically has been used in digital twins,” said Skyler Chi, Global Head of Enterprise Accounts at Exiger. “If you have a large-language model capability that allows for you to say, ‘Let me know what the inventory looks like away from these high-risk regions’ to get immediately actionable insight, I think that we’ll see much of that come about in 2024.”
Chi suggested that supply chain digital twins may soon see further innovation: “Something with a more predictive posture, which is something everyone’s talking about today. This is one focus of Industry 4.0 and how to better manage the data exhaust being created by yesterday’s digital twins.”
New Considerations for Procurement and Cybersecurity
Generative AI will continue to transform strategic sourcing and procurement decisions in promising ways, according to Lauren Elliott, Director and Global Head of DDIQ Implementation, in a recent interview with Procuretech. “It’s the ability to assess markets and suppliers in those markets without collecting data through time-consuming and manual means. Open-source data vendor assessment tools, exchanges, and certification marketplaces are becoming really valuable ways to have transparency into a market or supplier ecosystem without the traditional costly and often inaccurate market research process.”
One challenge to watch: AI can be a tool for cyber attacks. “Cyber criminals are going to continue to target supply chain entities to disrupt and damage organizations. And using generative AI is an efficient, creative means to that end,” said Munish Walther-Puri, Vice President of Cyber Risk at Exiger.
He noted that bad actors are already using generative AI (GenAI) to craft perfectly deceptive emails for phishing or masquerading as a company executive. Or they may target open-source components in AI models that are part of a supply chain’s operation.
“Criminals will use some of this powerful technology to spread disinformation or to poison internal data models so they get the attention of a board of directors or a Fortune 500 company,” he said.
Nonetheless, he believes GenAI is going to be the fastest growing technology supplier in 2024. Elliott added that it will become one of the “superpowers” of the procurement professional of the future, helping them to synthesize price, performance, and risk into simple and intuitive answers in a sourcing process.
In addition to AI, see what other factors will be key for resilience in 2024 by getting our new white paper, Supply Chain Resilience: 6 Factors to Watch for in 2024.
Perspectives
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