BEYOND THE BUZZ: AI
PREPARING FOR AGENTIC AI
“Supply chain planning leaders should prepare for an agentic AI future , but they need to separate meaningful capability from market noise. The priority today is not full autonomy, but building the operational discipline, architectural flexibility, and decision frameworks that allow agentic AI to scale as the technology matures.” – JAN SNOECKX , Senior Director, Analyst – Supply Chain Strategy and Planning, Gartner
“Create a knowledge document with everything that you know—what is important knowledge for your specific role—so that it can be given to an agent, and there are no context gaps when they are making decisions on your behalf.” – TROY LESTER , Co-Founder and CRO, Warp
Reality Check for AI Agents in Manufacturing Supply Chains By ROSS MEYERCORD , CEO, Propel Software
Agentic AI watches, assesses, and acts within the boundaries set using your business rules, your system configurations. It solves problems
customer commitments, and cost structures. If that data lives in five systems that don’t communicate, the agent’s eectiveness is diminished. Competitive advantage goes to manufacturers whose data flows through connected infrastructure. If understanding the business impact of a supplier change requires manual work across multiple systems, you’re not ready for agentic AI. The Foundation Agents Need to Operate Safely: Governance Without proper infrastructure, agents make decisions based on patterns that miss critical business context. An AI agent analyzing supplier quality data might notice a compliance field gets completed less than half the time with no consequences. It concludes the field isn’t important and stops requiring it. But what if that field captures FDA-mandated traceability data that simply hasn’t been audited yet?
Successful implementations pair intelligent agents with platforms that enforce business rules and compliance requirements. Before deploying agents, establish governance protocols. Can you control which agents access sensitive supplier agreements? Do you have automated audit trails documenting agent decisions? AI Outlook The next few years will bring purpose- built agentic solutions that communicate through standardized protocols. A design change will automatically trigger agents across new product introduction, demand planning, supply chain, and procurement in a coordinated sequence. Manufacturers must recognize that connected intelligence requires connected infrastructure. Companies chasing AI without addressing fragmented systems will find themselves managing unreliable automation that creates as many problems as it solves.
across workflows before they cascade into business disruptions that kill margins and strain customer relationships. There are four key areas where agentic AI can positively impact manufacturers’ supply chain operations: predictive risk management, continuous supply chain monitoring, connected data infrastructure,
and operational governance. Why Fragmented Data Cripples AI Eectiveness
Agentic AI creates an uncomfortable reckoning. To optimize supply chain decisions, agents need simultaneous visibility into engineering specifications, quality history, supplier scorecards,
July 2026 • Inbound Logistics 31
Powered by FlippingBook