The impact of Artificial Intelligence on Supply Chain: literature review and conceptual framework

The activity of the supply chain requires supply, data collection of production processes, availability of materials, scheduling and demand forecasting. In the context of Industry 4.0, which relies on artificial intelligence, the data mentioned above can be retrieved in real time, exploited and analyzed in very short time frames. The objective of this research is to identify the characteristics of supply chain approaches in this fourth industrial revolution. A literature review of publications concerning the supply chain process over the past decade is presented. It proposes an analytical framework based on the following axes: supply chain activities, planning horizon, resources, target users and artificial intelligence resolution approach. The results demonstrate that to cope with disturbances, research proposals have primarily focused on balancing resource use within short-term planning horizons. The study also reveals that automatic and multi-agent learning methods are preferred over other methods (Petri networks, reasoning) as resolution approaches in the context of supply chain activities.