The AI-Powered
Supply Chain
5 Practical Ways to Get Started
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
AI agents: AI purpose-built for supply chain tasks..................................................... 4
1. Order management: Pursuing the perfect customer experience.........................5
2. Procurement: Improving margins and controlling risk...........................................7
3. Demand planning: Building more accurate forecasts...........................................10
4. Manufacturing: Improving uptime with predictive maintenance...................... 13
5. Logistics: Optimizing transportation and fulfillment efficiency......................... 15
Embrace supply chain AI with Oracle........................................................................... 17
How Oracle can help......................................................................................................... 18
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 2
Introduction
Supply chains are anything but back-office operations in today’s business environment.
There’s a clear link between supply chain performance and customer satisfaction—
customers expect fast and predictable production and deliveries, and businesses must
navigate rising costs and global disruptions to meet these expectations. To thrive, companies
need more than just hard work and efficiency.
Artificial intelligence is quickly moving from a futuristic concept to a practical tool that can
help supply chain teams in businesses of all sizes. Companies are now using AI-powered
systems to enhance demand forecasting, route optimization, inventory management,
and other processes, helping them build smarter, faster, and more resilient supply chain
operations. Generative AI services have captured the attention of C-suite executives, and
software providers are building AI capabilities into their systems to help users complete
analyses, create content, and even take specific actions. Meanwhile, AI agents are helping
make it simpler to apply AI to answer questions or automate workflows within the
supply chain.
Yet, for many organizations, getting started with AI can feel overwhelming. Where do you
begin? And what kind of results can you expect?
Here are some practical business scenarios that illustrate where and how you could put AI
to work across your supply chain operations to enhance order management, procurement,
demand planning, manufacturing, and logistics.
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 3
AI agents: AI purpose-built for supply chain tasks
The AI technology landscape is moving fast. So before we dive into specific use cases, it’s
important to highlight an emerging force in how supply chain organizations will increasingly
put AI to use—AI agents. Agents are generative AI–powered digital assistants that can help
users simplify or automate supply chain processes or tasks. AI agents can help create their
own plan of action, draw on your company’s own supply chain data, tap into customer- or
equipment-specific documentation, and even use other agents to assist completing tasks
you assign.
For example, an AI agent might draw on your company’s policy documents to help answer
employee questions about purchase limits, discretionary discounts, or price changes. Better
yet, it might draw up a purchase order that conforms to your company’s style and policy so
all you need to do is review and approve it. Or a maintenance agent might look at equipment
documentation and a machine’s service record to help provide an answer to a technician’s
questions about a repair. As these examples suggest, AI agents specialize in tasks that
typically require cognitive reasoning, such as answering complex questions, offering
recommendations, and completing tasks on behalf of employees. Look for more of these AI
agents to be built into supply chain management systems to support routine tasks and help
people efficiently make informed decisions.
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 4
1. Order management: Pursuing the perfect
customer experience
The scenario: A maker of industrial equipment wants to give customer service reps more
complete and up-to-date information about orders and their status so they can give
customers better answers.
The challenge: Customer service needs vary by industry, but the end goal is always to keep
customers happy and coming back. When it comes to order management, businesses can
struggle to equip customer service teams with the information they need to answer inquiries
quickly and accurately. Order data can be scattered across multiple systems, and by the time
it reaches the reps, it’s often outdated or incomplete. Customers calling to check on their
orders or request updates may face delays while reps manually piece together information
from different sources. This can lead to longer resolution times, frustration for customers and
employees, and ultimately diminished customer satisfaction.
The AI use case: AI technologies—and particularly generative AI—can help enhance order
workflows, improve customer service, and increase overall efficiency in handling sales orders.
One of the most practical applications of AI in order management falls under customer
service. By automating routine tasks, learning from data, and drawing on insights gleaned
from customer behavior, AI can provide customer service agents with crucial assistance,
helping to significantly improve customer support from a reactive function to one that
anticipates individual customer needs and priorities.
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 5
For instance, a generative AI–powered assistant can instantly access order information
to help a customer service representative ascertain if something’s wrong with the order
their customer is asking about, and it can then suggest options for what the rep can do
to fix it based on company policies and documentation. Say a customer reports a defect
in two products they received. The representative can ask the AI assistant for details on
the company’s policy for handling defects and determine that they can advance ship the
customer replacement products and offer them a tailored discount, such as expedited
delivery or a free visit from a field service technician.
GenAI can also be used to help produce sales order change comments. If a customer or
salesperson changes an order, an AI assistant can help summarize the changes across
multiple revisions of that order, saving time and providing a succinct view of what was
changed from the original order to the new order. Similarly, when a customer or salesperson
creates a new order or changes one, AI can generate an order acknowledgement email based
on the order description. A sales or service representative can then review the text before
sending it, maintaining accuracy and oversight while boosting productivity.
One final area where GenAI may help enhance order management is writing product
descriptions for use by sales and marketing teams. GenAI can create a first draft of a
description based on various product data sources. A product expert can then quickly
fine-tune that description based on their nuanced understanding of their customers—for
example, by adding sizing or material details about which customers often ask.
Oracle Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Order Management
Oracle Fusion Cloud Product Lifecycle Management
Built-in AI agents
• Customer Sales Representative Guide
• Discretionary Discounting Advisor
• Price Change Assistant
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 6
2. Procurement: Improving margins and controlling risk
The scenario: A global electronics manufacturer looks to more clearly classify spending
on components from multiple international suppliers to support better cost
and quality assessments.
The challenge: Classifying corporate spending into clearly defined categories gives the
business visibility into where and how money is spent, which can help facilitate better
cash flow forecasts and budgeting, more thorough supplier evaluations, and stronger
accountability to spending policies, among other benefits. But such spending classification
is often done manually, which is a time-consuming and error-prone process that can lead to
problems with data accuracy, visibility, and control. For example, one employee might classify
a software subscription under “IT services,” while another might categorize it as “software
licenses,” making it hard to spot spending trends.
The AI use case: Spending classification software with embedded AI can help consolidate
and analyze spending data from source documents such as requisitions, purchase orders,
invoices, and expense reports and automatically sort the spending into specific categories,
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 7
eliminating the need for manual classification and providing more insight into
spending patterns.
With accurate classified data in hand, procurement teams can better identify potential
savings and new sourcing opportunities, negotiate more effectively with their suppliers, and
enforce spending policies and controls. For example, analysis of the classified data might
reveal that the organization is sourcing similar products from multiple suppliers when they
could be consolidating purchases with one or two suppliers to secure volume discounts.
Early adopters of AI-supported spending classification have gained greater visibility and are
finding significant savings—in the tens of millions of dollars for one global energy
services company.
Procurement teams could also use generative AI to draft a set of questions to help them
evaluate a given supplier, supporting efforts around supplier qualification management, risk
management, and sustainability. Additionally, AI could analyze a company’s procurement
policy documents and then suggest relevant qualification criteria to assist in creating and
updating supplier requirements.
Another area where generative AI can help is supplier sourcing. A GenAI model could pull key
information from a request for quote that the procurement category manager has created.
The model could then use that data to perform a web search, create a list of potential
suppliers and their websites along with a summary of those suppliers, and draft cover pages
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 8
for a procurement manager to review and send to potential suppliers, helping procurement
teams increase sourcing efficiency and reduce risk.
Procurement systems with embedded AI can also aid corporate sustainability efforts
by helping map out a company’s carbon impact across the value chain and providing
recommendations on suppliers, materials, and other policy considerations that are
important from a supply chain perspective. So if a business is factoring in carbon emissions
when choosing suppliers for a new product, the GenAI model would be able to show the
carbon impact for a specific component material from a specific supplier to help inform
decision-making.
Oracle Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement
Built-in AI agents
• Procurement Policy Advisor
• Supplier Portal Support Advisor
• Supplier Code of Conduct Assistant
• Sustainability Policy Guide
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 9
3. Demand planning: Building more accurate forecasts
The scenario: A consumer goods company manages an intricate supply chain and needs
more accurate demand forecasts to help it determine production volumes and allocate its
inventory across channels and markets.
The challenge: To accurately predict customer demand and avoid overproducing, an
organization can consider numerous complicated factors, such as holiday spikes and other
seasonal fluctuations, shifting market trends, new competition, and supply chain limitations.
Spreadsheets and basic statistical models aren’t sophisticated enough to satisfy today’s
complex forecasting needs. Planners need intelligent tools to help them make more effective
decisions about the company’s supply-demand balance and do scenario planning to prepare
for situations such as new product launches, ingredient shortages, and changing
customer trends.
The AI use case: AI can help businesses anticipate and respond quickly to changes in
demand so they can better control inventory and costs, avoid excess stock and waste, and
manage manufacturing resources. By analyzing past sales data, current promotions, regional
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 10
trends, and external factors such as competitor pricing and seasonality, AI can help give
businesses access to powerful data analytics within their supply chain planning tools to help
them estimate demand.
For instance, AI can spot demand pattern changes and help optimize forecast model
parameters, which underpin the algorithms that planners use when creating a forecast. AI
can essentially provide additional recommendations for parameter tuning to help improve
demand forecast accuracy. For example, AI can automatically sample internal information
such as historical and operational data alongside external data such as consumer buying
patterns, help suggest possible parameter improvements, and save those suggestions for the
next time the model runs.
AI-powered low-touch planning can potentially
increase gross margins by 1% to 3%.
Source: KPMG
Such a system lets planners view detailed results and compare forecast accuracy before and
after parameter adjustments. Planners can choose to apply these optimizations immediately
or save them for later. This approach aids decision-making by allowing planners to quickly
understand what’s driving demand changes without spending an inordinate amount of time
tending to data models, letting them focus their time on strategy and responses instead.
KPMG advocates for AI-enabled integrated business planning to “help eliminate the gap
between supply chain planning and execution.” It describes the strategy as “low-touch
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 11
planning,” which minimizes human intervention in planning processes while leaning on
advanced analytics for deeper insights. KPMG estimates low-touch planning can potentially
add 1% to 3% to gross margins1.
Generative AI can also play a role in supply and demand planning, especially in improving
collaboration. GenAI capabilities can help people on both the buyer and the supplier sides
find quick answers related to company-specific policies and guidelines as they review their
order forecasts and commits. For example, supply chain professionals will be able to ask
GenAI whether company policy allows them to under commit or overcommit an order volume
compared with the forecast.
Oracle Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain Planning
Built-in AI agents
• Supply Chain Planning Process Guide
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 12
4. Manufacturing: Improving uptime with
predictive maintenance
The scenario: A manufacturer of consumer packaged goods aims to improve machine
uptime and make equipment maintenance and repair processes easier for technicians.
The challenge: Unexpected machine downtime drives up operating costs and can lead to
production delays, inconsistencies in product quality, safety hazards, and a host of other
pitfalls for a manufacturing business. Repeated equipment breakdowns and hurried repairs
can reduce a machine’s lifespan and negatively impact operations and ultimately customers.
The AI use case: Some manufacturers are now using AI on the factory floor to help keep
operations running. There’s a shift toward AI-enabled integrated systems—think robust
platforms such as manufacturing and supply chain management software that can collect
and connect data from various sources and subsystems to power analysis and automation in
complex organizational processes. These systems can receive and assess real-time data to
help manufacturers increase efficiency while still maintaining quality.
Factories do plenty of preventive maintenance based on the calendar or hours of use, but AI
helps them do more predictive maintenance based on how a given machine is functioning.
By analyzing large volumes of sensor data and operational patterns, AI models can help
detect anomalies such as excessive vibration, unusual electrical patterns, a drop in fluid
pressure, or sudden changes in temperature that may signal a looming issue or breakdown.
So rather than waiting for equipment to fail, the software triggers a maintenance order
before any problems occur, helping reduce unplanned downtime and extend the life of
manufacturing or warehouse equipment. Research from Deloitte found that preventive/
predictive maintenance can cut unplanned downtime by as much as 53%2 and reduce defects
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 13
by around 80% (compared with reactive maintenance), helping businesses stay ahead of
problems and avoid costly repairs or replacements. Catching equipment issues early through
AI monitoring can also help enhance safety.
Preventive/predictive maintenance can help
cut unplanned downtime by as much as 53%.
Source: Deloitte
Generative AI also has a role to play in improving maintenance and repair processes.
Presented with a problem such as excess vibration or heat, generative AI can suggest
possible resolutions based on documented maintenance procedures, troubleshooting tips,
past repairs, and operating manuals. The recommendations can help repair technicians
quickly understand a problem and start fixing it, without having to comb through
equipment manuals.
GenAI can also draft repair summaries that outline the details of a repair or maintenance
activity for the technician to review and enhance with additional nuances based on their
expertise. This GenAI capability can help make work order summaries more complete and
accurate, cut the time needed to write them, and steadily help build a richer knowledge
library for technicians. Similar GenAI capabilities can be applied to create shift notes, which
production operators use to pass information on to the next shift manager so they’re aware
of any issues that arose. In this use case, the GenAI model would generate relevant notes
based on operating data and bullet points provided by the production operator, helping
speed up end-of-shift tasks while hopefully improving the thoroughness of such notes.
Oracle Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Manufacturing
Oracle Fusion Cloud Maintenance
Built-in AI agents
• Maintenance Troubleshooting Advisor
• Manufacturing Operational Procedure Guide
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 14
5. Logistics: Optimizing transportation and
fulfillment efficiency
The scenario: A retail company operates a network of distribution centers to fulfill online
orders and restock physical stores, and it wants to find ways to lower transportation costs
while providing accurate and timely shipment estimates for customers and stores.
The challenge: Online buyers today expect fast delivery times and simple order
tracking, even as businesses grapple with the limitations of legacy technology and rising
transportation and distribution costs. Often relying on a combination of intuition and staff
experience, many shippers and logistics providers still plan shipment routes manually using
maps, geographical data, and spreadsheets, balancing proximity, delivery time windows,
vehicle capacity, driver availability, and more. Unsurprisingly, this method is time-consuming,
prone to errors, hard to scale, and less adaptable to sudden changes..
The AI use case: The ability to accurately and efficiently map out a transportation and
distribution route can have major impacts on a company’s customer service, profitability,
and sustainability efforts, and AI is playing a growing role in this area of logistics. AI and
machine learning embedded in transportation and warehouse operations software can
help businesses easily detect which shipments are at risk, understand what global trade
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 15
documentation is required, and accurately predict transit lead times and ETAs, giving supply
chain professionals tools to make more effective decisions as conditions change.
To recommend the optimal delivery route, AI learns from historical data and the behavior of
team members when completing orders in a transportation management system. It uses this
learned knowledge to suggest the ideal route, considering established preferences and other
factors such as service level agreements. If a staff member needs to manually change the
system-recommended routes to adjust to on-the-ground realities the model didn’t consider,
the AI model learns from that input and uses it to help make future recommendations. This
AI capability can help reduce manual work and expedite the shipment order
planning process.
The ability to accurately predict shipment lead times is highly sought-after in logistics, and
AI can help provide these estimates. An AI model can use shipment history data—breaking
down each shipment leg and analyzing it against historical data, carrier information,
seasonality, and other factors—to predict shipment times and improve ETA accuracy. This
AI-driven approach helps companies be less dependent on carrier quotes and deliver more
dynamic ETAs that adapt to real-world conditions while factoring in historical patterns. AI can
also help detect orders that are at risk of being late, alerting distribution managers who can
prioritize those orders. This information lets the company warn customers about potential
delays, which can help improve customer service and loyalty.
Oracle Applications
Oracle Fusion Cloud Logistics
Oracle Fusion Cloud Transportation Management
Oracle Fusion Cloud Warehouse Management
Oracle Global Trade Management
Built-in AI agents
• Delivery Instructions and Restrictions Assistant
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 16
Embrace supply chain AI with Oracle
Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) is a comprehensive suite of
applications that helps customers maintain and optimize their entire supply chain. By
providing automation, real-time visibility, analytics, and embedded AI capabilities, the suite
helps businesses run an effective supply chain so they can meet customer expectations, help
reduce costs, and operate more smoothly and predictably.
Oracle is embedding AI and generative AI across its Fusion Applications suite to help deliver
immediate value to customers. Oracle also delivers high-speed AI infrastructure via Oracle
Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Additionally, Oracle has announced the development of more than 50 AI agents to assist
users with generative AI–powered services that are embedded into specific business
processes and transactions. By using data found in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications,
customer-specific documentation, and various connected sources, these AI agents help
provide up-to-date, contextually relevant information and assistance. They specialize in
functions that typically require cognitive reasoning, such as answering complex questions,
offering personalized recommendations, and completing tasks on behalf of employees. The
dynamic and secure use of data lets Oracle AI agents deliver accurate, timely, and relevant
support, helping customers enhance decision-making and improve operational efficiency
across their organizations.
The AI-Powered Supply Chain: 5 Practical Ways to Get Started 17
How Oracle can help
It’s now easy to get started using AI in your supply chain
operations. AI agents and generative AI are embedded in
Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM, come at no added cost, and are
delivered as part of regular quarterly application updates.
Explore more about how Oracle AI can support your supply
chain team, or request a demo today.
Learn more Request a demo
Connect with us
Call +971 4 390 9010 or visit [Link]/ae/
Outside the Middle East, find your local office at [Link]/emea/corporate/contact/
1. “Supply chain trends 2024: The digital shake-up,” KPMG, 2024 [Link]/us/en/articles/2024/supply-chain-trends-2024
2. “Predictive Maintenance: Optimize maintenance with Industry 4.0 technologies and advanced analytics,” Deloitte, 2024
Copyright © 2025, Oracle and/or its affiliates. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is
not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability
or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this
document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and
Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.