Artificial intelligence (AI) is often seen as a threat to jobs, with a recent TUC poll showing half of UK adults worry that AI will take their job. When it comes to the supply chain sector, AI is shaping up to be a powerful tool that empowers planners to take on more creative, fulfilling roles.
The prospect of AI-enabled supply chain planning is an exciting one for both professionals and businesses. Scaling operations without the need to massively increase headcount is a major selling point for any enterprise, while for professionals, the prospect of removing the repetitive, mundane and manual processes that restrict and slow effective planning is surely a promising one.
Far from job elimination, AI is a major upgrade for supply chain workers in a number of different ways. We’re entering a new era of increasingly autonomous AI systems, which will elevate supply chain planning to new heights. So, how exactly will the day-to-day role of the planner evolve as we go further into the AI era?
Humans still in control
First, it’s important to dispel a myth: the supply chains of the future will not be “driverless”. Many believe that AI, and particularly agentic AI, has the potential to run supply chains on autopilot. This is far from reality: while AI can surface insights, automate tasks and even take action in a crisis, it will always need to be augmented by a human to fully interpret the nuances of the real-world.
This human oversight is a crucial failsafe. There will be many times where AI flags potential shortages and proposes the best way to respond, but it will only ever be as good as the insights it is fed and the guidance given by human. For example, what if it is missing a crucial bit of real-time information about an upcoming election which could lead to disruptive trade challenges? While the algorithms. may be great at crunching the numbers and making recommendations, only a human planner can assess the full context surrounding a decision before deciding action.
The future of supply chain planning isn’t AI instead of humans, it will be AI and humans. In the AI era, supply chain professionals will be the orchestrators, steering AI systems and validating recommendations with important human insights and context.
Each planner is likely to have fleets of AI agents beneath them, acting as demand forecasters, inventory optimisers and scenario simulators – feeding information back to the supply chain professionals to empower them to make the best decisions based on the maximum amount of data analysis, all done in real time.
Planners unleashed
With AI handling the mundane and routine supply chain tasks, planners will be unleashed to focus on the creative, strategic elements of the job that machines simply cannot do: building relationships, working with partners, building and selling strategy, and, of course, managing AI agents.
Consider negotiations with partners, for example, AI won’t be able to compete with a human. It will, though, supply planners with the data they need to enter those discussions armed with deeper insights than ever before, empowering them to work more effectively.
Planners will also play a critical role in shaping the very AI tools they use – training models, curating data, and ensuring outputs reflect reality. Over time, this human feedback loop will make the technology even more valuable.
One key evolutionary step we are starting to see is the emergence of Autonomous Concurrent Orchestration. Currently, many vendors focus on agents automating existing siloed processes, but in the future, we will see more agents that synchronise planning decisions across functions – procurement, logistics, manufacturing – in real time. Agent-to-agent communication will break down silos and speed up problem solving and decision making, easing the burden on supply chain professionals.
Augmenting, not replacing
Perhaps artificial intelligence is the wrong phrase when it comes to supply chains Instead, the industry should be discussing augmented intelligence, where machines unlock insights and real-time decision making that simply wasn’t possible when tasks relied on manual processes.
For planners, the AI era promises exciting change: embracing new tools and evolving alongside this technology is not only good for business, but good for the careers of supply chain professionals.
- AI in Supply Chain