IMPRESSIONS from a Cross-section

Robots are going to be pervasive in warehouses, working and supporting people in the warehouses. RPA (robotic process automation) allows companies to automate repetitive tasks, even in a legacy environment, and can be applied to take manual work out of the process. This is an area where we see the ability to shorten implementation time by using business-focused questionnaires to pre-define setup.

AI has seen many applications at the retail end, but very few AI applications have sought to change the operations side of the industry. Robotics definitely has been used to do some heavy lifting, repeated jobs in the manufacturing but hasn't made an impact on tasks that have variations and need continuous adjustments.

AI / robotics have the potential to enhance supply chain speed and consumer responsiveness, but may challenge existing long value chains. Knowing that there is an opportunity from AI will not result in being able to exploit that knowledge, if companies can't add agility into the mix.

AI is being adopted largely in the areas of forecasting to improve buying decisions and allocations, but this is also being adopted in CSR and sustainability, decision support in logistics and leveraging forecasts as part of the postponement strategies within sourcing and order management.