Companies are seeking real-world supply-chain gains in new AI tools

livemint.com:

Companies growing more comfortable with artificial intelligence are bringing the latest tools into their supply chains, with goals of cutting costs, speeding up distribution and getting ahead of potential disruptions. The early steps suggest areas where logistics operators see the greatest near-term benefits from generative AI, the developing technology tool that can quickly sort through large amounts of information, make predictions and respond to questions in a humanlike voice.

Businesses from law firms to manufacturers have been searching for potential benefits since the technology emerged in late 2022, with early steps focused on speeding up tasks such as decision making, software coding and writing business reports. For logistics operators, initial uses have included creating chatbots that can handle customer-support functions such as tracking shipments and booking loads.

Companies are now finding ways to bring the technology into their day-to-day logistics operations. German software firm Celonis is working with a snack-food supplier that is using generative AI to combine truck loads to cut shipping costs and speed up delivery.

Celonis Chief Executive Alex Rinke said the supplier had manually evaluated factors such as the weather to determine which shipments could be combined and whether it needed to use refrigerated trucks for its freight. With AI, “we can proactively tell them, ‘Here are all the truck loads that you have going out that you should consolidate,’" Rinke said.