The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Supply Chain Management.

This paper investigates the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in supply chain management, highlighting the main challenges and opportunities of its application and developing recommendations for practice. It adopts a qualitative method, an interpretivist philosophy and a deductive approach. Primary data were collected through open-ended interviews with nineteen supply chain managers and analysed using narrative analysis. Secondary data were drawn from peer-reviewed journal articles published since 2012 and analysed thematically. The findings indicate that AI is steadily taking a larger role in the supply chain, improving the accuracy of demand forecasting and order fulfilment. AI-enabled robots and machines also reduce human error and improve workplace safety. However, the energy and cost involved can raise operational investment, and many developers are deterred by the power demands of deep learning. Introducing systems to the workforce early, with equal training for everyone, can significantly speed up adoption. This paper is condensed from an MSc applied dissertation completed at the University of Salford (2021/2022), supervised by Dr Langes Supramaniam.