 Welcome to the next episode of Digital Supply Chain Institute Insights in Action. Today with me, I have a pleasure to have a great conversation about a very interesting topic with our co-chair Mike Crow. Mike, welcome. Thanks for having me, Marco. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Mike, because you have been for so many years and you are even now on the forefront of new technologies. So exploring the AI topics will be something I think interesting for everybody and it goes from like seven to 97 years, I think, of age for everyone who is interested in technology. So there has been a lot of hype around Generative AI since it has launched Chet GPT. And what are your high level thoughts on Generative AI and what should comprise companies basically, sorry, do about it? Well, first of all, the hype is certainly understood. It's incredible new capability that has been launched and particularly it's been made accessible broadly to all consumers of technology through an interface like Chet GPT. It's a huge inflection point for AI and for computing in general that I think is going to change just about everything in our lives over time here. It's all very exciting. It's all very new. It's a big change for all companies. The thing that I think doesn't change is how companies should respond to and with this new capability. Every company should now be looking at how they can use Generative AI to improve their business operations, their efficiency, their productivity. But they should also be looking at Generative AI to figure out how they can use it to provide services and products to their customers that they haven't been able to provide before. You know, as they do that they should be asking themselves how could Generative AI disrupt my business or how could I use Gen I to provide disruption out in the marketplace. None of that approach is really all that new that's the part that I don't think has changed because I believe that all companies have asked themselves those similar questions and I've taken those similar approaches. On every inflection point related to technology including machine learning in the past. Thank you Mike and and I really one thing which you mentioned resonates with me is that you know certain things are already known. So it's not that you know it's just all new new. And then linking it now to where we are you know linking it to the digital supply chain arena you know AI Generative AI holds a big promise for demand forecasting accuracy, reducing inventory costs and you know enhancing supply chain efficiency so can you share with us any specific examples or use cases where Generative AI algorithms has demonstrated this impact. It's really early. So, I completely agree that there's a ton of opportunity as it comes to demand forecasting to efficiency to productivity to inventory to supply or risk management as we go forward here. I haven't seen a lot of that come to fruition so far. Now I realize things are changing very quickly so that could become a very dated statements. But I think there's a ton of opportunity as well. You know I have seen some reports of being a one or more of the ERP vendors who are adding capability into the ERP. You know, for example, looking at all the different news feeds on suppliers or your set of suppliers around the world, being able to to then take that information identify risk and automatically generate communications out to the suppliers. So there are bigger things to come. But, but as we talk about that let me focus in on supply chain planning. As an example, you know it's a space I've had a lot of experience in in the past and a couple of the big pain points on supply chain planning has been number trying to find a perfect planning system, which I would say does not exist even to do today. On the second point was the adoption of the planner or the end user and the confidence that they gain in the system. I think generative AI could help out a lot on both of those pain points. To allow mid much more vast amounts of data to be considered in the planning scenarios that combined with the generative AI capabilities should lead to a more accurate first draft of a plan. I think equally as important though is that chat GPT like interface on the planning system to allow the planner to interact with the algorithm. So imagine a plan gets generated for the first time. And then the planner responds back to the system saying I have late breaking news. We need to prioritize skew number 123 because we've got a huge order from priority customer. Please take that into consideration and regenerate the plan. And then the planning system using gen I capabilities, not only produces a new cut of the plan with that priority in mind, but also explains to the planner. Okay, I've factored in that consideration. But now you need to see what the impacts are to the plan associated with that reprioritization. Here are the offsets or the drawbacks, and then allow the planner to iterate on that until they get to a plan that they're happy with the best plan that they can move forward with. Thank you Mike and you know it's a great example I think planning is one of the biggest things which come for came forward after especially covered. And you know we see a lot of companies struggling with it even today and you you link it to the next big thing which we can touch on and that's basically data. And how do you see then the role of collaboration and the data sharing as a crucial part of supply chain management and how can generative AI enable organizations to harness collective intelligence leverage diverse databases and foster collaboration among various stakeholders, in order to optimize you know the decision making and also have better outcomes for supply chain in general. There's a lot of promise there you know the more data that we can share amongst companies within an industry and across industry, the more powerful that data models can be and the more powerful that generative AI can be. There's a lot of promise there. There are some key dependencies that everyone should be focusing on while they're waiting for those priorities to emerge or those capabilities to emerge and that is that we need to. We need to bring the data that we have in our supply chains out of silos within our company and get them on to a modern cloud data platform. We need to make sure that data is accurate as we're moving into that cloud platform, and it needs to be multi company within an industry or multi industry, not just one company's data. The good news for DSCI members is there are companies that can help with this today. I happen to be involved with one of them, a company by the name of spec right which is a leader in this specification data management platform space. They facilitate that and much more. So to the DSCI membership, you know if you haven't taken a look at spec right take a look at spec right as an example someone who can help you get your data in order, so that then you can best be able to take a manage of these generative AI capabilities. Thank you very much Mike and again it's always great to talk to you because you have practical insights how things can be linked and where people can look in for solutions and the companies who are taking the forefront in these areas, and who are pioneers are really needed so in order to try to wrap up the conversation, I think in a right way we have to touch two more aspects and you know I'll try to put them in the next question and that that would be towards as generative AI continues to evolve. What are some challenges or considerations organizations should be aware of when implementing a scaling these technologies in their supply chain right. How can they ensure, and this is a very crucial thing I think you know the ethical use of AI and then maintaining the transparency and accountability in decision making process. You know I've already talked about the importance of the data so I won't reiterate that, you know let me move into a couple of different areas. First as you as you start to go after the generative AI capabilities, you know companies like Google open AI and others are making it easy. You have software engineers to do some of your own development of gen AI capabilities, but especially considering that the DSCI membership, you don't have to do it all yourselves. Every software company out there every technology company out there is currently working and figuring out how to use gen AI to improve their service offerings to improve their product and give you new services and products to help your business. So the advice would be, stay close to those emerging technologies, have your eyes looking outward on what these companies are doing and who can best help you apply generative AI to improve your business. To the to the second part of your question. I think it's a really good one there you know generative AI is going to provide often very accurate results for you to take advantage of. But there will be honest mistakes me as models are being developed, and there will be bad actors out there with bad intent, who are utilizing generative AI to disrupt the models as well. I think a whole new space of technology is going to emerge that is going to be there to detect, as well as prevent these honest mistakes, as well as the bad actors with their bad intent. Just like the cybersecurity space, it could be an extension of the cybersecurity capabilities we have from those providers today. It could be new providers and a whole new industry that emerges for that detection and prevention. Either way, I see it coming and it's another thing for everyone to keep their eye on. So if I can try to sum up there should be an excitement there should be court cautiousness if I can put it that way and then open mindedness for learning and exploration. Very good summary Marco. Thank you very much for being with us in DCI insights in action. I look forward doing another session with you you know let's say as time goes by and looking into more case studies I think that would be quite interesting because we all learn through the process and it is a journey as you have shared with us. So thank you once again for being with us Mike. My pleasure Marco thanks for having me. Look forward to the next episode of DCI insights in action and we look forward to continuing the journey with you. Thank you all and goodbye.