AI in supply chain operations is equivalent to—Improved inventory management. Improved warehouse organization. Improved accuracy in predictive analytics. Improved logistics management. Improved transportation and shipping. Improved customer satisfaction.

Leveraging technology, automation, and robotics will enable the supply chain industry to witness massive change in the coming years. A technology-driven supply chain would be more conducive, comprehensive, and collaborative. Tasks once susceptible to human errors, delays, and perforated forecasts would become more authentic and accurate with automation and robotics. The retailing industry and most companies outside technology are earnestly adopting AI for two broad reasons: one, to cut costs, and second, to boost productivity.

According to a top American technological research and consulting firm, investments in advanced supply chain software that enable a smooth transition from traditional modus operandi to more intelligent supply chain operations are estimated to grow at a five-year CAGR of 16.3%. This growth prediction means that investments that were $29 billion in 2023 will escalate to $62 billion in 2028.

Automation and Robotics will Transform Supply Chain Management

Digital supply chain transformation integrates and automates operations. It enhances transparency, increases visibility, and builds a linear and precise ledger that is easy to analyze for improved accuracy in demand forecasting.

Robotic process automation in the supply chain reduces repetitive tasks, minimizes the time required for task completion or answering customer queries, keeps a check on expenses, gives a thrust to work, minimizes errors, improves efficiency, and provides real-time insights—the most precious aspect of all! Besides these, some of the tangible transformations that automation and robotics can bring to supply chain operations are—

• Drones in Supply Chain Operations: Drones can capture images, easily dodge traffic, and be used for sustainable, fast last-mile deliveries. Empowered by AI, drones can be used for optimized warehouse operations, alerts about maintenance and stocks, and improving efficiency. They provide real-time insights for enhanced accuracy.
• Enhanced Predictive Analytics for Supply Chains: Supply chain managers receive real-time insights into demand requests and processing from the point of sale to order fulfillment. This improves predictive analytics and improves demand forecast efficiency.
• Augmented Vehicles: Managing repetitive, routine, and essential warehouse tasks smoothens with AGVs. These automated guided vehicles, which work alongside humans, speed up work and make it more organized. In a line, they bring efficiency to order management at various levels of supply chain operations.
• Improved Customer Satisfaction: Transparency, traceability, and efficiency in order management improve customer satisfaction.
• Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Supply chain automation tools allow end-to-end integration. This minimizes errors, saves time, ensures quality in working order, and makes the system scalable and flexible for growth. It also makes the supply chain sustainable, as less energy would be required to complete the order fulfillment process.

Key Areas of the Supply Chain that Benefit from Automation

Automation, robotics, and AI have a long way to go! They are the future, so trade gurus always recommend that a company’s growth and expansion plans include ways to integrate advanced technology. It is a game changer and would bring a paradigm shift to supply chain operations by syncing applications for comprehensive predictive analytics and demand forecasting. Continuing this discussion, let’s find out how it will impact the supply chain and identify the key areas that will revolutionize and enhance supply chain operations once those are automated.

• Warehousing: Smart warehouse technology can be either in its nascent or advanced stage, but it starts with integrating warehousing with other supply chain operations for real-time insights, transparency, and traceability.
   
  Warehouse automation can be taken to the next level by introducing robotics in warehousing—it will execute various warehouse works, such as receiving pallets, sorting, storing, shelving, retrieving, packaging, and transporting, with the most incredible precision of time and accuracy. Other features that can optimize warehouse operations are AI and machine learning that can predict trends, aid in decision-making, introduce drones for streamlining and simplifying tasks, RFID technology, and use collaborative robots or cobots that work alongside humans to scale up productivity and make it more flexible.
   
  Automation, AI, and robots enhance warehouse efficiency and productivity, save costs, optimize space utilization, create a safe working environment for employees, reduce errors, improve inventory management, and increase customer satisfaction.
• Inventory Management: Automation for inventory management allows control over a company’s inventory stock. Automated inventory control systems, such as barcodes, scanners, and digital systems, improve efficiency, curtail unnecessary expenses, provide real-time inventory tracking and tracing, are scalable with demand fluctuations, reduce errors, provide data-driven insights, ensure proper space utilization, and increase customer satisfaction. It is like a package that improves a business’s prospects for growth.
• Order Fulfillment: Automation in order fulfillment means putting the fulfillment process on autopilot mode. From receiving orders from multichannel sales points to tracking the nearest store to picking and packing to dispatch to shipping to last-mile delivery—technology and robotics ensure customer satisfaction is not compromised. Instead, the level goes higher, and businesses can focus on R&D, strategic partnerships, and identifying growth opportunities.
• Shipping and Transportation: Automation in shipping and transportation is a revolution and a real head-turner. It redesigns and reshapes the working module of the transportation industry by digitalizing the process through sensors, IoT devices, and GPS. Including autonomous vehicles in logistics that use advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) makes it convenient to respond to hazards and detect them before it is too late. It reduces risks, saves fuel and cost, and helps with logistics planning and scheduling. AVGs (Automated guided vehicles) do not require drivers; they can be used to deliver heavy loads and are sustainable.

Automation is very significant in the journey of startups that have fewer resources to reach out to their target customers. Automated, streamlined work with real-time insights can deliver better results.

Automation Improves Employee Productivity & Satisfaction

To humans, automation sounds quite condescending and usurper. But it is not so! In the coming years, it will open new avenues for employees. Automated supply chain systems would work alongside humans, as they provide valuable insights about customer behavior, market trends, and product demand. They save employees from the fatigue of working relentlessly to decipher information from repetitive tasks like counting, analyzing data, maintaining a ledger of freight movement, tracking cargo in transit, ensuring stock availability before peak seasons, and identifying market opportunities. Robots can work 24/7 without getting tired and give valuable information simultaneously. Real-time visibility and data availability improve employee productivity.

Supply chain process optimization reduces human mistakes—an outcome of boredom from doing the same work that lacks innovation or challenge. Automation enhances working conditions, improves employees’ confidence, and makes them more productive. Employees can invest their time and energy in increasing their satisfaction by developing new products or ideas that can benefit a business or a company or widen the scope of business. Automation enhances demand forecasting, motivating employees to get competitive and explore avenues to expand market reach while increasing customer satisfaction. Precision to performance surpasses all levels as risk factors are reduced due to better predictive analytics.

Technology Reduces Errors, Speeds-up Processes & Drives Innovation

By leveraging supply chain efficiency through technology, companies employ thousands of hands to finish a task with great precision and accuracy. Technology enables faster work completion, so assignments that took long hours, sometimes days and months, are completed in minutes. It also shares valuable insights that might help in developing new ideas and taking business to the next level.

In supply chain management, blockchain is an immutable decentralized ledger that provides tamper-proof transparent data and improves operational efficiency. It makes tracking and verifying the quality of goods in transit easy. It enhances the security of the supply chain until the last-mile delivery. Blockchain in supply chain management enhances innovation, as at every level, partners make an entry about the value addition to the product or the supply chain operations. The stakeholders can see each entry that impacts decision-making. Since the ledger, a cloud-based system is readable by all the stakeholders, it drives innovation by providing insights into the anticipated market demands.

Another exciting feature that has changed the supply chain landscape is the introduction of robotics in logistics. Robotics can streamline supply chain operations, making them more organized and less time-consuming, enhance operational capabilities, and ensure faster order disposal. It speeds up supply chain operations and makes the order fulfillment process most gratifying and satisfying.

AI and robotics improve customer relationships by responding to queries in real-time and helping customers with shopping. They enhance customer satisfaction and speed up the order fulfillment process.

Technology, automation, and robotics are tools for smoothening supply chain operations and achieving bigger goals. They provide space for employees to think and add value to the product to capture greater market share.