By Thomas Strain, Vice President of Technology, Surgere

Information is king at every stage of manufacturing. Production process controls. The location of raw materials. Final shipping destinations. Seamless production and logistics, put simply, depend on knowing where your stuff is, at all times. Real-time visibility helps professionals make the right decisions, optimize systems, and perhaps most critically, avoid costly disruptions to their operations.

The information itself, however, won’t improve your business strategies or make you more competitive. It’s what you do with that data that matters.

Supply chain professionals must be equipped with tools that will make the most effective use of all the data your operation produces. And that’s where agentic artificial intelligence (AI) comes in, which represents the next evolution of how AI is transforming supply chains and industrial operations everywhere. Improved inventory levels, better service levels, and reduced logistics costs are just some of the benefits experienced by early adopters of AI technology in supply chain management.

What makes agentic AI different? Where generative and other AI systems require human input to train the program, agentic AI maintains greater autonomy and can take action and make decisions without human intervention. Using machine learning and natural language processing, agentic AI is always building on its previous experiences and incorporating new data with historical information—and that can have a major impact on supply chain professionals. Let’s explore how:

Agentic AI and Its Benefits
Agentic AI is not a widely standardized term, but it generally refers to AI systems that do not rely on genetic algorithms or evolutionary computation for learning or optimization. Instead, they use strategies like gradient descent, reinforcement learning, or symbolic reasoning. The term is often used in contrast to “genetic AI,” which involves evolution-inspired methods.

Indeed, agentic AI’s ability to continuously learn from previous tasks and ongoing inputs of real-time data is what sets it apart from previous AI tools. With agentic AI, you can streamline operations by automating workflows, tracking shipments in real time, planning and optimizing loads and routes, and even enhancing customer service. As a result, people can focus on handling more complex and often nuanced tasks involving real-world interactions. Any operation runs more smoothly when its team members can spend more time doing what they do best.

Agentic AI is also capable of assessing operations and suggesting productivity improvements to your workflows. For example, how many touchpoints are in your manufacturing process? Sourcing, procurement, packaging, labeling—the list may go on, and agentic AI can analyze them to see whether it’s possible to reduce the number with no adverse effects on product quality.

Elsewhere, where one forecast might spot a possible stockout in the future, agentic AI can tell you whether that demand is a sign of a trend or just an outlier that doesn’t necessitate a major production shift. Information can be gleaned from market trends, competitor information, historical statistics and more, enabling AI to notice things like rising costs before proactively developing a solution. It can even run analyses you may not have considered. It’s all about delivering insights that help you improve your supply chain.

Agentic AI can be used in conjunction with other leading-edge technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, resulting in an even smarter overall system. IoT generally refers to the software which powers data-collecting devices that provide information on data points such as machine health status, asset tracking, and production rates. Other examples include sensors powering smart warehouses, packages that monitor transportation and storage environmental conditions. A blockchain is a secure database that allows for the exchange of encrypted data by multiple parties. When everyone has real-time access to all transactions in a vendor database, for instance, it eliminates the need for updating and reconciling individual accounting systems.

Last but not least, it’s important to remember the human element. Because integrating agentic AI into your manufacturing supply chain ultimately helps you get the most out of your most valuable manufacturing resource: The talented humans who make everything happen.

In Supply Chains, There’s Always Room for Improvement
Your production lines might be running fine. Your current supply chain tools may be adequate, and your teams may be operating optimally. Perhaps you’re not currently experiencing bottlenecking, delays, and other consequences of limited supply chain visibility.

But few things are more constant than change throughout the broader industrial and manufacturing landscape, which can lead to unforeseen complications that can make an impact on your business. It’s worth your continued consideration of new tools and resources—because standing still means getting left behind.

Agentic AI solutions represent a new frontier for supply chain professionals, and early adoption can provide their business with a true competitive advantage. Dig deeper into a larger mine of historical data than traditional systems to reveal new insights and empower more accurate predictive analyses. Achieve better forecasting and less risk of excess inventory and wasted production resources.  Discover a better understanding of your customers, putting you in a position to amplify the strengths of your unique value proposition, provide more precise services, and identify new business opportunities. It’s all possible with the right solutions from the right partner.

Thomas Strain is Surgere’s vice president of technology and leads Surgere’s technology organization as well as its hardware integration to bring data-driven supply chain software solutions and AI platforms to the market. Strain holds an M.S. in Information Technology from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Saint Leo University. Learn more and discover how to leverage Surgere’s supply chain expertise here.