IDC research makes the case for AI-driven supply chain forecasting

Recently-issued research by Framingham, Mass.-based market research and consulting firm IDC highlighted the firm's top 10 predictions and underlying drivers that the firm expects to have the biggest impact of manufacturers' IT investments in 2022 and future years to come as well. A top-level look at the predictions sees that they address remote operations, supply chain management, product and service innovation, security, data, and application sharing, B2B commerce, low code/no code, and sustainability. Perhaps the most germane prediction, relative to our industry, was prediction number two, which was the following: "By 2023, 50% of All Supply Chain Forecasts Will Be Automated Using Artificial Intelligence, Improving Accuracy by 5 Percentage Points." That one really caught my eye, given everything that the supply chain has been through going back to the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. And while things have been uneven, to be fair, the pandemic really highlighted the need for better supply chain forecasting on myriad fronts, for things like supply chain resiliency, demand planning, inventory management, equipment and labor availability, among many others.