AI for Operations and Supply Chain

The operations function classically lives in Excel; monthly demand forecast, weekly production plan, daily route plan are done with 'last year + seasonal' logic. This approach's forecast accuracy is typically 60-70%; AI lifts it to 85-92%. The accuracy gap multiplies the 'bullwhip' effect through the supply chain — a 5% deviation at demand becomes a 30%+ deviation at raw material. AI-based demand forecasting breaks this multiplier.

Critical concept: 'from forecast to decision' — not just forecasting demand, but auto-triggering inventory, production, route decisions in response. When OPS-01 (demand forecast) + OPS-02 (inventory optimization) + OPS-03 (route optimization) work together, the 'plan once a week' culture evolves into 'plan every hour'. Typical impact: stockout rate down 50%+, inventory capital down 15-25%, logistics cost down 10-20%.

The EU Supply Chain Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) covers large and mid-sized companies selling to EU markets from 2026. Direct impact for Turkish exporters: as first-tier suppliers, they must make their own human rights, environment, and ethics performance verifiable for EU customers to count them as compliant. The manual annual audit model can't carry this load.

Supplier Risk Scoring (OPS-06) closes this gap: financial health (balance sheet, payment patterns), operational performance (lead time deviation, quality complaints), regulator compliance signals (news, social media, industry databases), and geopolitical risk (country scores) are tracked in real time. Manual review is triggered for suppliers with rising risk scores; the investment committee proactively breaks single-source dependencies.

Last-mile logistics in metros like Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir exceeds classic OR (operations research) — traffic dynamics, customer time windows, cargo type constraints, driver shift rules must be modeled together. AI-based route optimization (OPS-03) combines real-time traffic feed + predictive ETA + driver experience signals to produce a dynamic plan refreshed hourly, replacing the static 24-hour-ahead plan.

Typical impact: fuel per fleet down 10-20%, on-time arrival 85%→95%+, daily deliveries per driver up 15-25%. Special advantage in Türkiye context: traffic prediction models trained on local data outperform global SaaS — operators like Aras Kargo, Yurtiçi Kargo are turning to in-house investment for this reason.