AI Starts to Make Some Supply Chain Decisions

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the March-April 2020 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

March-April 2020

Are you ready for NextGen technologies? Just the other day, I had the opportunity to tour one of Amazon’s highly automated robotic fulfillment centers. I expected to be dazzled—and I was. But it wasn’t because of the automation. The tour was a reminder that there’s no question that NextGen technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, robotics, 3D printing and 5G are going to be the differentiators in tomorrow’s supply chain. The question is: Are you ready?

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Artificial intelligence finds itself deep in a world of seeming contradictions these days. On the one hand, AI is believed to be a black box of universal truth. Yet, it is often not as sophisticated as a three-year-old. Most think of AI as a form of general intelligence. Yet, its most advanced forms are actually narrow intelligence. Some view AI as a stand-alone technology. Yet, it is also a feature of other technologies and applications.

Until most recently, AI lived almost entirely in a digital, academic world. Yet, it is now breaking into the physical world of the supply chain. Fortunately, AI is doing just fine living with all this turmoil. And there is one certainty about AI: It has already made the leap from the Tuesday Science section of The New York Times to the daily Business section. And it’s not going back—especially in the supply chain.

Early on

The contradictions of AI should not alarm: They are simply manifestations of how it is developing and being perceived—sometimes in exaggerated ways.

Despite how fresh it may feel, AI is not new (yes, another contradiction). Its origins trace back to the 1950s. Some link the concept of machine learning directly to Alan Turing, who created a model for a general-purpose computer in 1950. That said, 2020 is still an early time for AI.

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