Machine Learning - For Supply Chain ERP

Machine learning has seen a rise in popularity - from popular fiction to autonomous driving to bot chat. Does it have any applicability to boring Enterprise Resource Planning - especially for Supply Chain?

The answer is a boring "yes, of course". Supply Chain is the art and science of making sure factories are humming 24/7 and  that logistics is delivering optimally and predictably.

If you examined most of the Supply Chain ERP modules from Oracle/Netsuite, SAP, Infor, etc, they basically have broken down their solutions into four silos : Suppliers, Logistics, Factory, and Warehousing.

How can machine learning be applied to Supply Chain ERP? Here is a glimpse of the now (descriptive) and the future (prescriptive)

Descriptive explains WHAT HAPPENED. Predictive provides advance data on WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN. Prescriptive offers WHAT SHOULD YOU DO.