According to the , 63% of respondents 鈥渉ave an AI strategy linked to business objectives鈥� to improve operational efficiency, business resilience, and increase employee productivity.

Our objective in this digital, adaptive, autonomous supply chain journey is to utilize the breadth of AI technologies to assist customers in achieving their business goals and drive significant value regardless of their current maturity level in business practices and technology.

Business Challenges in Integrating AI

Business leaders see significant challenges in integrating AI into business applications and processes, especially when trying to make sense of vast amounts of unstructured data. These challenges specifically stem from:

• Data quality: Data is inconsistent or not reliable nor current.
• Organizational Readiness: Organizations continue to rely on on-premise systems that pose challenges around stale data, integration, and scalability.
• Volatility: Global AI regulations are constantly evolving, for example the EU AI Act. Technologies such as large language models (LLMs) are also rapidly changing in performance and price with new models and providers popping up almost weekly.

These challenges underscore the need for a thoughtful approach to integrating AI into supply chain processes. delivers a comprehensive set of relevant, reliable, and responsible AI solutions that effectively tackle many of these hurdles and ensure seamless AI adoption throughout your supply chain processes.

• For additional insights into relevant, reliable, and responsible AI, see “Trustworthy AI Can Reinvent Companies and Help Resolve Global Challenges” from 麻豆原创 CEO Christian Klein.

Our Vision of AI-Enabled Supply Chains

For decades, 麻豆原创 has led the way in , empowering its customers to streamline their complex end-to-end supply chain processes for enhanced efficiency, agility, and resilience. The 麻豆原创 Supply Chain portfolio introduces innovation through various technologies, including AI, to transition your supply chain from digital to adaptive, with the ultimate vision of instituting an autonomous supply chain.

There are three possible maturity levels where you could stand in your business transformation. It is also important to acknowledge that different lines of business are on different maturity levels in an organization 鈥� while supply chain planning may already be somewhat adaptive, manufacturing operations may still be at the start of a digital transformation.

• Digital: Digitalization is the starting point. The 麻豆原创 Supply Chain portfolio automates manual processes, enabling a seamless, digital end-to-end business process and digitalizing paper-based systems. This results in better access to data, greater visibility, and control over the entire supply chain, setting the foundation. Most importantly, 麻豆原创 provides the tools and systems to get data ready for more advanced stages.
• Adaptive: This step is marked by an integration of cutting-edge technologies into business processes, including the use of predictive analytics and simulation for decision-making and Big Data, as well as the introduction of , 麻豆原创鈥檚 copilot for every supply chain cloud application. These technologies empower supply chain professionals with intelligent insights and recommendations, enhancing decision-making for greater agility and resilience.
• Autonomous: Next, we envision a path characterized by technological, procedural, and data enhancements that will propel the supply chain into an autonomous era. This transition will happen gradually but ultimately enable supply chains to operate autonomously with minimal human intervention, resulting in even greater efficiency, adaptability, and responsiveness. It empowers supply chain experts to focus on truly value generating activities and spending precious time on only the most critical disruptions and business opportunities.

Technologies that Lead Toward Autonomous Supply Chains

麻豆原创 has been developing innovative AI capabilities that are fully integrated across digital supply chain applications, catering to diverse customer technology readiness levels. For example:

• Optimization models, rule-based predictive analytics, and heuristics improve, for instance, transportation plans, production scheduling, supply plans and spare part fulfillment. This allows a powerful way to automate decision-making in balancing conflicts of interests, such as customer service levels versus supply chain cost.
• 麻豆原创-owned machine learning is applied across the 麻豆原创 Supply Chain portfolio; for example, in gradient boosting algorithms for demand forecasting, intelligent lead time predictions and failure curve analysis. 麻豆原创 also offers customers a 鈥渂ring-your-own-model鈥� approach to enable extensibility for specific domains such as visual inspection and anomaly detection.
• Generative AI, when embedded in digital supply chain applications and combined with Joule, will allow users to conduct complex business transactions in simple conversational ways. We will augment tasks like conducting what-if scenarios for supply chain planning, assisting in new product ideation, analyzing manufacturing issues to accelerate the onboarding of new equipment, and assessing advanced failure modes of assets with generative AI.

With these technologies, our goal is to support customers wherever they stand in their journey and help them move from a focus on mere digital transformation to highly adaptive processes — and ultimately toward autonomous supply chain systems.

Examples of AI Innovations

Let’s explore specific innovations delivered in the 麻豆原创 Supply Chain portfolio: These cases are classified according to their primary focus on digital, adaptive, and autonomous as a continuous journey. These innovations will be enriched over time and every business may find themselves at a different stage of maturity in different parts of their supply chain processes.

Digital

Intelligent Lead-Time Prediction for More Accurate Integrated Business Planning
This machine learning extension enables the extraction of historical lead times from goods movement data in 麻豆原创 S/4HANA and analyses outliers and key influential factors for lead time changes to predict future lead times. The results are then uploaded as input for planning runs within 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning, thus facilitating better decisions, and enhances plan adherence by considering the dynamic nature of actual lead times and future trends.

• .

Everstream Powered Risk-Aware Supply Chains for 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning
Critical data for decision-making can sit outside of the four walls of a company. Using external network data is imperative for better decisions based on supply chain risks in a digital transformation. This capability integrates external incident data — for example from Everstream Analytics — into 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning and enables companies to proactively anticipate and manage external risks in their supply chain planning process. This integration allows supply chain planners to perform risk-aware planning by actively reflecting external risks affecting their supply chain, such as geopolitical shifts, material shortages, global regulations, extreme weather events, and more. Figure 1 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Adaptive

Product Design and Formulation

麻豆原创 Product Lifecycle Management (麻豆原创 PLM): Generative AI for Recipe Formulation
In the process industry, technology plays a crucial role in recipe creation and formulation to meet consumer demands. A fast time-to-market of launching a new recipe, in compliance with local regulation and sustainability targets, can be paramount to the competitiveness of a company. Generative AI integrated into 麻豆原创 PLM assists in developing, enhancing, and customizing recipes, thus expediting product innovations, enhancing productivity, and supporting product compliance and sustainability for manufacturers of formulated products. Figure 2 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Logistics

麻豆原创 S/4HANA Transportation Management: Intelligent Goods Receipt Analysis
In high-volume logistics industries, the manual tasks involved in inbound goods receipt can be time-consuming and error-prone. By leveraging AI-based document extraction, this use case automates data extraction from freight documents, seamlessly integrating them into 麻豆原创 S/4HANA, enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and time savings.

• .

Asset Operations

麻豆原创 S/4HANA Enterprise Asset Management: Intelligent Maintenance Order Recommendation
LLMs optimize maintenance planning, promote agility, and improve asset performance and reliability in 麻豆原创 S/4HANA enterprise asset management. In this innovation, generative AI supports users in the assessment of maintenance requests by recommending appropriate tasks and spare parts, thus enhancing operational efficiency. Figure 3 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Autonomous

Supply Chain Planning

麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning: Interactive Planning Assistant
Demand, supply, and inventory planners often use complex machine learning algorithms. By using generative AI and conversing with Joule in natural language, planners can gain insights into the models’ variables, constraints, and decision processes, leading to much more informed decisions and proactive planning. 麻豆原创 helps customers boost explainability but also enable what-if scenario simulations for complex planning decisions. Figure 4 illustrates this innovation:

• .
• .

Manufacturing / Industry 4.0

麻豆原创 Digital Manufacturing: AI-Driven Visual Inspection
In industrial manufacturing, human-led visual inspection can lead to potential quality issues and is synonymous with a higher degree of manual labor. This capability applies computer vision AI into the production process to automatically identify defects and allocate non-conformance for production decisions, thus supporting a consistent and objective quality analysis that contributes to cost savings associated with reworks and recalls. Figure 5 illustrates this innovation:

• .

Join the evolution and embrace AI, whether you are in a digital transformation or already driving toward adaptability or are taking your first steps toward autonomous supply chains or functions.

More Details

Ready to revolutionize your supply chain using artificial intelligence? Here’s how to get started:

• Register in the to explore Joule in 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning for conversational search
• Dive into the IDC report “” for insights into AI’s pivotal role and its use cases in supply chain and operations

And stay tuned for more Early Adopter Care programs and updates on future innovations.

Dominik Metzger is head of 麻豆原创 Digital Supply Chain for 麻豆原创 Product Engineering.

The new capabilities of 麻豆原创 PLM solutions include native connectivity with 麻豆原创 cloud ERP solutions and supply chain management solutions from 麻豆原创. This connectivity enables businesses to deliver the right product at the right time at the right price by providing end-to-end visibility and control across the entire value chain. By smoothly linking product data with business processes, companies can efficiently organize product information, streamline workflows and foster cross-functional collaboration, ultimately enhancing their ability to meet market demands. Leveraging partnerships with DSC Software AG, Cideon and others, the solution also integrates with third-party product data management and computer-aided design tools, shrinking implementation times.

“Integration is critical for companies modernizing their manufacturing strategies and operational processes,鈥� said Dominik Metzger, head of engineering for 麻豆原创 Digital Supply Chain. 鈥淐ollaborating with Hilti not only demonstrates their trust in our product lifecycle management solutions but also allows us to shape the future of cloud-native 麻豆原创 PLM offerings.鈥�

A centralized repository for product data management is embedded directly into the 麻豆原创 PLM portfolio, serving as a single source of truth. This simplifies data organization, minimizes errors and accelerates time to market by fostering effective teamwork across various stakeholders.

“By leveraging cloud-native 麻豆原创 PLM solutions, we are not only enhancing our product development processes for customer-specific products, but we are making construction better,” said Johann Stadler, head of large projects IT for Hilti.

Hilti, operating in over 120 countries, has been at the forefront of innovation with a comprehensive range of construction products. The company has embarked on its next phase of digital transformation by adopting 麻豆原创 PLM to bring unprecedented levels of efficiency and transparency to its product development processes, providing customers specifically engineered and on-demand prefabricated products.

Learn more about cloud-native 麻豆原创 PLM solutions or watch the 2024.

Visit the . Follow 麻豆原创 at .

Media Contacts:
Julie Schneider, +1 (650) 687-2788, julie.schneider@sap.com, PT
Martin Gwisdalla, +49 6227 7-67275, martin.gwisdalla@sap.com, CET
麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ.  Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of 麻豆原创鈥檚 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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Offering more than 10,000 products to 50,000 customers in over 50 markets, BSH has a factory network of more than 40 sites and 150 warehouses and distribution centers. With the goal of making life better for customers through world-class home appliances and services, the company prides itself on product and supply chain innovation.

During the pandemic, answering the increasing demand for reliable products and delivery dates was particularly difficult. Moreover, changing long-term customer needs due to strong seasonality and new distribution channels were added as new challenges. The ongoing manual planning and execution processes at BSH were not enough to provide customers with the information they need, on-time and in the form they want.

Knowing the key to achieve risk resiliency in the ever-changing VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world is to enable transparency and visibility in supply chain operations, BSH Home Appliances Group chose the and to coordinate business planning and execution functions for enhancing the customer experience.

Building Risk Resilience in the VUCA World

Businesses are planning for the perfect world but executing in a VUCA world where things don鈥檛 always go to plan. As a global producer of home appliances, BSH needed to change the operating environment to match continuously increasing and changing demand to the restricted supply. To manage this, the company needed to build risk resilience within its supply chain operations.

BSH aimed to synchronize planning, manufacturing, and logistics operations to achieve high levels of transparency and visibility into supply chain operations for resolute and agile decision-making processes.

鈥淣o matter how well we can plan product allocation and order promising, if we鈥檙e not able to execute and deliver as planned, everything falls flat. We need synchronization and collaboration between our planning and execution functions,鈥� says Bernard Czap, senior project leader S&OP Transformation & Order Promising at BSH.

The company followed a comprehensive process integration 鈥� from planning to order processing and fulfillment 鈥� while integrating sales and operations, production planning, and scheduling processes. With this seamless integration, the company can now manage bottlenecks, with allocation concepts to handle scarcity, allowing it to be more reliable when it comes to order promising and fulfillment.

Keeping the Promises High and Stock Levels Low

The company primarily followed two approaches for enabling this transformation. The first approach was to replace the previous push-based planning process with a pull-based system. This means designing the entire supply chain to adapt to unexpected changes instead of predicting what product variants customers would purchase in the upcoming months.

The second approach was to achieve a lean production system, which was seen as the key to stability. This required the ability to level聽product mix and volume, for example, by producing the same appliances every Monday at the same time and achieving a fixed structure to balance production and streamline suppliers鈥� processes.

With , BSH now only produces the predefined quantity of appliances that have been removed from the warehouses. In other words, BSH produces what is sold. Also, by decoupling the inventory, BSH achieved a valuable buffer against unexpected disruptions by standardizing manufacturing operations. This enabled the company to reduce inventory costs while improving customer satisfaction.

鈥淲ith demand-driven material requirements planning, we are reducing our stocks and improving our ability to deliver to our customers at the same time,鈥� adds Michael Huber, global program lead for Digital Supply Chain at BSH.

Enable Demand-Driven Predictive and Prescriptive Planning

By leveraging with and establishing the sales and operations () process, BSH can use forecasts as input parameters for calculating its stock. This enables the company to ensure that there are the right products in the right amount at the right time.

鈥淲ith the 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning application for response and supply, we consistently combine the tactical operational planning with the actual execution of day-to-day business 鈥� in other words, supply chain execution and fulfillment,鈥� says Czap. 鈥淏ottleneck management, allocation concepts to handle scarcity, and to be much more reliable in what we tell our customers when it comes to order promising became the main capability to drive the company, especially in a notorious situation of worldwide supply shortages.鈥�

With the , BSH has improved forecasting and sales planning with automated and semiautomated functionalities for demand sensing, not only for long-term but also short-term forecasting of products. The helped bring cross-functional teams from across the company together to agree on the same figures. And the helped ensure and improve the demand-driven supply of its multi-level value chain network.

鈥淲ith 麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain, we can now handle customer orders even better: which location must be supplied, when, and how so that production and logistics can coordinate their activities and deliver orders on time and as required,鈥� says Dietmar Baumann, global program lead for Digital Supply Chain at BSH.

After the implementation success in China, BSH is planning to roll out the response and supply application company-wide, including integration with all its markets, factories, warehouses, and material groups. To ensure that planning is properly executed on the delivery side, the company is in the early stages of employing 麻豆原创 Business Network for Logistics, , and that can be integrated with 听补苍诲 .

But no matter where nations are on the roller coaster of steep rises, dramatic declines, and seemingly stable plateaus, inflation brings wide-ranging impacts that vary across industry, geography, and supply chain design. Adequate liquidity for smooth business operations can be affected. Centralized banking actions on interest rates can ease or restrict short-term lending and borrowing activities. Even supply chain challenges can dissipate or intensify as costs fluctuate and inventory on hand becomes less or more expensive.

There is no simple, magical financial instrument that can help businesses plan around the realities of , but intelligent technology can help. Tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics can help companies anticipate and see around the corners of their operation, simulate and prepare for multiple contingencies, and pivot their business models as needed. Best of all, they gain numerous options to understand economic circumstances, predict the impact, take near-term actions, and establish structures to secure a position of strength.

Below are three key areas where these types of technologies can help companies understand the impact of inflationary challenges, act quickly, and prepare for what鈥檚 next.

Move Cash with Intelligence and Confidence

The overall value of money and assets reduces in the future, and having cash sooner allows a business to quickly accomplish more. To mitigate this risk, companies must recognize the potential impact of various scenarios, ranging from rising prices on commodities to shortages of raw materials. This knowledge then needs to be translated into comprehensive and clear cash flow projections and flexible strategies that can be adjusted to manage liquidity shortfalls and surpluses effectively.

Using , now part of 麻豆原创, finance leaders can guide their business down the best-possible pathways. They can choose to adjust receivables and payables strategies or tap the lowest-cost credit line available from their banking institution. Plus, working capital assets can be unlocked with financial tools such as dynamic discounting and supply chain financing.

The working capital management solutions accurately reflect inflationary conditions with AI-enabled forecasts and updated views that are always available to the business planner. From planning and simulation to picking the right funding alternatives and controlling processes, these functions work synchronously to help ensure effective coordination of cash movements 鈥� using a single source of trust integrated smoothly across the enterprise.

While every decision boils down to the movement of cash, the combination of well rounded, real-time information, auto-generated possibilities, and predictive insights can help businesses make the best choices with confidence. And as their values change over time, goods and assets can be purchased and maintained in the future at the original price with a carrying cost that鈥檚 less than the inflation rate.

Limit Exposure from Global Differences

Different geographies rarely have the same experience with inflation, but a rise in commodity prices inevitably increases raw material costs. And in higher or unstable inflation regions, currencies can depreciate quickly, causing exchange rates to spike.

These global economic fluctuations can be particularly risky for corporations that have borrowed capital in response to low interest rates over the last few years. Inflation is already eroding their planned repayment strategy for outstanding loans. And additional exposure to another region鈥檚 instability can further exacerbate cost pressures, squeezing margins tighter and limiting access to cash.

With the application, treasury managers and financial leaders can monitor risk positions, commodity price changes, and currency conversion rates, even during the most volatile economic situation. They can develop compliant hedge accounting strategies with a complete audit trail, while staying compliant with regulations such as the Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and the most recent version of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 9).

Treasury teams can also gain insights to tackle debt and manage investments more effectively. 麻豆原创 Treasury and Risk Management offers information such as available cash, balance risk, and return on investment (ROI) and monitors investments against potential interest rate fluctuations. In addition, borrowing and lending transactions through the life of a loan can be captured, analyzed, and reported as they occur.

Act Quickly Today and Prepare for Tomorrow

When the engineering and production of manufactured goods grow more expensive, businesses must decide on whether to reduce margins or pass additional costs to the customer. It is a tough choice, especially when people already feel financially overburdened.

By integrating solutions with , procurement, supply, and logistics organizations can get the insight they need to generate more revenue from every spend event and optimize cost reduction. Together, they can run simulations and what-if analyses to identify and engage trading partners with the capacity and expertise to handle emerging situations such as scaled-up production and further drive down financial and material waste.

Of course, effectively managing inflationary risks requires businesses to have access to the right data to make decisions and move their supply chains forward. The combination of 麻豆原创 Digital Supply Chain and 麻豆原创 Business Network enables companies to manage resources more strategically in ways that help increase productivity, decrease operating costs, and free up employees for more mission-critical work. In addition, organizations can get ahead of supply chain delays and downtimes to prevent revenue loss and avoid unforeseen costs with visibility into inventory and production capacity, asset maintenance, and logistics processes.

Come from a Position of Financial Strength

With recent inflationary events in mind, understanding and managing the financial risks in the supply chain play a significant role in the race for survival. And companies that can step up and make the right decisions at the right time are the ones that have clear visibility over their procurement, supply chain, and logistics data and processes.

For many organizations worldwide, 麻豆原创 solutions are already one of the most effective means of protecting their financial strength during times of inflation. And they will continue to alleviate their challenges as the portfolio continues to evolve to meet the needs of a changing economy and competitive landscape.

Inflation impacts costs, interest rates, and supply chains worldwide. .

Neil Krefsky is head of Finance and Risk Product Marketing at 麻豆原创.
Haresh Chhaya is a Treasury and Working Capital solutions leader at 麻豆原创.
Max Hendrickx is senior director of the Working Capital Management Center of Excellence at 麻豆原创.
Eamon Ida is director of Business Network Solution Marketing at 麻豆原创.