Written by Dr. Elena Revilla and Dr. Maria Jesus Saenz, MIT Digital Supply Chain Transformation Lab

AI is starting to play a major role in how companies negotiate with suppliers. These advancements are driven by the need for greater speed, scalability, and strategic agility due to increasingly complex supply chains and disruptions caused by external factors such as weather and trade wars. Once a cost-saving tool for automating low-value, repetitive negotiations, AI is now being used to make key decisions in procurement.

However, adopting AI isn’t straightforward. Companies must navigate hurdles such as data quality, regulations, and matching the right tools to the right situation. Drawing from our more than six years of research on human-AI collaboration and the use of AI to conduct autonomous supplier negotiations, we outline in this article how companies can unlock the full value of these advances. Our research includes studies of major companies at the forefront of applying AI in supply-chain management in a variety of industries, including retailing, pharmaceuticals, consumer packaged goods, logistics, and IT.

Read the full article in Harvard Business Review at hbr.org »