Survey: Pharmaceutical supply chain leaders seek more AI

Pharmaceutical supply chain leaders say that artificial intelligence and machine learning are their top investment priorities, with advanced data analytics following behind as a key priority, according to a survey from LogiPharma , a life sciences trade show event firm. Respondents said that the leading application areas for AI deployment would be: demand planning and forecasting, inventory optimization, and logistics orchestration. However, reaching those goals may be a challenge, since many organizations continue to face questions around governance, compliance, and implementation. Regulatory uncertainty and compliance concerns were identified as the single biggest barrier to broader AI adoption, while more than half of respondents remain uncertain about AI's ability to meaningfully improve disruption prediction and mitigation. Another hurdle revealed by the research was an investment disparity between AI (ranked as a priority by 96%) and network optimization (ranked as a priority by 53%). That gap supports the industry idea that there is an “operational maturity gap” between the visibility provided by AI and the systems which are in place to react when that visibility identifies problems.