Our global supply chain community is being tested by severe pressures, from ongoing geopolitical challenges and raw material shortages to disruptive tariffs and now the U.S. government shutdown. While these crises demand immediate attention, the deeper issue underlying them all is the persistent talent gap. Interestingly, this week's news highlights a consensus among experts that overcoming these hurdles hinges on redefining how humans and AI integrate within the modern workforce.
AI has widespread implications for supply chain, including autonomous last-mile delivery; augmented reality for more efficient picking and packing; data discovery, collection and processing ; and smarter process automation, ASCM Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Rennie writes in a recent blog post: “AI is about making better decisions faster by combining significantly more inputs and signals than humans can process,” she notes. “It can adapt in near-real-time to changing conditions and develop new knowledge by processing more data and revealing hidden correlations.”
Of course, AI is not foolproof. As Infoworld reports, “Your biggest risk in AI isn’t prompt injection or data poisoning; it’s people. ... If your organization can’t field enough staff who know how to apply AI to your actual business, you will spend a lot of money on tech that will take you absolutely nowhere.”
The article cites booms in cloud technology and big data, in which companies scrambled to adopt the latest tools and hire experts without first considering how existing employees could be upskilled. The same mistakes are already happening with AI, an industry so new that there simply aren’t enough experts to fill the necessary roles.
Likewise, a Microsoft study found that 75% of knowledge workers were using AI on the job, yet only 39% were actually trained to do so by their employers. However, two-thirds of executives say they won't hire someone without AI skills. “That’s a recipe for shadow AI, uneven results and mounting risk,” Infoworld cautions. “The durable advantage isn’t a specific model; it’s a workforce that knows when AI helps, how to wire it into the business, and how to keep it safe and measurable over time.”
The technology is advancing quickly, particularly with the rise of agentic AI, which functions autonomously to make decisions and execute complex, multi-step tasks. As executives from Deloitte Services note, agentic AI automatically monitors vast amounts of data, generating insights that elevate information quality for decision-makers, with people serving as the final layer of expertise and judgment.
As I recently told Supply Chain Management Review, supply chain success demands investing equally in technology and talent. AI handles scale and complexity, while humans provide essential reasoning and ethical oversight. “The organizations that are much further ahead do not look at training as episodic,” I stressed. “Technology with knowledgeable, capable employees is the winning formula.”
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