SAP's agents are designed to cut excess and obsolete inventory by 20%, it said. Supply chain managers still own the write-offs.
SAP published the figures on Monday in a blog by chief product officer Manoj Swaminathan, alongside its fifth year as a Leader in a Gartner ranking of cloud ERP for product-centric companies.
The Supply Chain Planning Assistant, SAP says, analyses the cause of a plan exception, recommends a fix for the planner to approve, and builds service-versus-inventory curves so stock targets are set against capital rather than in a spreadsheet. SAP says the agents are designed to cut excess and obsolete inventory by 20% and lift order fill rate by 15%. A Manufacturing Assistant is designed to cut scrap and defect rates by 24%.
Those are design targets, not results. No customer's own inventory figure appears in the post, and the Gartner placement is that firm's opinion, not a check on SAP's numbers.
Earlier this month SAP said wholesaler Lemvigh-Müller's agents handle most supplier confirmations without a person, and labelled its Takeda figures "expected results".
Our reading for supply chain managers, who set the safety stock and answer for the fill rate: a design target is a benchmark to test against your own excess-stock line. SAP keeps the planner's approval in the loop, so the manager still signs the recommendation.
Sources
Our file on SAP
- 13 Nov
IT leaders are listing SAP's ERP among software they may replace, CIO reported. Gartner says most won't make the switch for years.
- 13 Nov
Trek says SAP online store fixes now take a day, not one to two weeks. Developers still approve every AI change.
- 13 Nov
SAP now shows emissions for selected cloud products, based on its servers. It still calls its spend-based estimate the reporting reference.
- 12 Nov
SAP is building seven AI agent families to help upgrade customer code. Its ABAP chief said ABAP changes are usually not undone.
- 12 Nov
SAP says Joule AI, used by 110,000 staff, brought 20% gains. Bloomberg reported SAP has not shown how it measured them.
For your next steering committee
- 1Ask which AI tools already touch your ERP or finance data, including the ones nobody approved.
- 2Ask what each tool is allowed to change, and who reviews what it changed.
- 3Ask how the result is measured, and who decides to switch a tool off.
Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01
Welcome back. · Issue 01
