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Dive Brief:

As global supply chains grow more complex and uncertain, agentic artificial intelligence may offer new ways for manufacturers to better manage risk and capture value in their organizations, according to a Deloitte report published Wednesday.
AI agents, which can reason, plan and act with autonomy, can perform routine activities that reduce cycle times and free up humans for other strategic tasks, according to Deloitte’s Resilient By Design: The Agentic Supply Chain. They also can conduct always-on monitoring and decision-making, as well as scale activities beyond the limits of human workers.
Victor Reyes, managing director of Deloitte’s Human Capital unit, told Manufacturing Dive that companies should reimagine their workflows around where they can most leverage AI agents, as well as identify the “unique parts of the jobs and the processes where only a human can make the call.”

Dive Insight:

Agentic AI adoption is already accelerating. A recent study from IBM found that more than half of the supply chain executives that it surveyed are already deploying AI agents to automate workflows.

Separately, Gartner estimated that by 2030, about 50% of cross-functional supply chain management solutions will use intelligent agents for autonomous decision-making. It also predicted in a more recent report that 40% of enterprise applications will have integrated task-specific agents by 2026, compared to less than 5% last year.

What’s resonating with companies today is the enhanced level of autonomy that the technology can bring, Reyes said, allowing for swift, proactive responses to dynamic commodity pricing, delivery timeframes and other factors.

“Now you have technologies that actually can be constantly monitoring and sensing those things and infusing that into your operations as they make decisions,” he said.

From a risk management standpoint, agentic AI can improve how manufacturers navigate geopolitical events and weather disruptions, as well as the frequent changes in tariffs and customs regulations.

The agents are able to evaluate an entire bill of materials, assess things at a component level and process and begin to take action, like initiating requests to alternative suppliers, Reyes said.

“It’s taking two or three or four steps in response to that sensing that’s quite different than just a dashboard that a human might have had before with some of this information and then have to figure out what to do with it,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges companies are facing is how to implement the technology with their current workforce in mind. Citing a separate Deloitte report, Reyes said about 93% of companies’ AI investments are going into the technology itself, while only 7% are going toward their people.

“You can throw all this technology in the mix, but if you’re not really taking the time to co-create a new set of roles with your workforce, you’re creating risk,” he said.

Deloitte identified four elements for executives to keep in mind that ensure sustained value creation with agentic AI, including data architecture, technology stack, workforce preparation and risk mitigation. Reyes said the first two are foundational or “evergreen” for companies, whereas the latter are important for conversations around where the technology can best fit within the organizations.

“What would you do if you could go out and hire 1,000 more people to run this organization? Well, that’s the kind of impact that you can have with agentic AI,” Reyes said.