Most supply chain teams in India still rely heavily on Excel sheets, manual uploads, countless WhatsApp groups, and ERPs/WMS systems that mostly act as transaction recorders rather than planning engines.
And that’s okay.
You don’t need a high-end digital stack to begin using AI and supply chain intelligence together.
In fact, AI delivers the highest ROI precisely in Excel-heavy, fragmented planning environments because the gaps are bigger—and the impact is immediate.
In this month’s issue, we break down how teams can practically use AI in supply chain management for integrated inventory planning, without waiting for a massive digital transformation.
1. Use AI to Clean & Standardize Your Data Automatically
Most inventory planning errors originate from bad data:
- Mismatched product names
- Wrong units of measure
- Inconsistent dates
- Missing sales for certain weeks
- Multiple versions of the same file
AI tools (even ChatGPT) can instantly:
- Standardise column formats
- Auto-correct UOMs
- Identify missing or outlier entries
- Merge multiple Excel files into one clean dataset
- Suggest the best forecasting granularity
This is often the first and most impactful use of AI in supply chain and logistics, eliminating nearly 70% of the manual effort planners spend every month before real analysis even begins.
Try this:
Upload your raw data → ask AI to clean it → paste back into your Excel planning templates.
2. Let AI Generate Demand Forecasts—SKU, Location, or Category Level
You don’t need an expensive forecasting engine to adopt AI in supply chain management.
AI can generate:
- Weekly forecasts
- Seasonal adjustments
- New-store ramp-up curves
- Holiday sale uplifts
- Safety stock recommendations,
by simply uploading your Excel history.
Even better, AI can run multiple forecasting models behind the scenes and recommend the best-fit approach—without planners needing deep statistical expertise.
Practical use: Ask AI:
“Generate the next 8 weeks’ forecast for these 200 SKUs. Flag SKUs with high volatility.”
Paste the results directly into your existing planning sheet.
3. Automate Allocation Decisions (Even If You Still Push to ERP Manually)
Once the forecast is ready, the next struggle is always the same:
How much to send, where, and when?
AI can support allocation planning across warehouses, stores, and regions, making it highly relevant for teams exploring AI in warehouse management without changing their core systems.
AI can create:
- Replenishment suggestions
- Min/max levels
- Route-wise allocation logic
- Warehouse-to-warehouse balancing recommendations
- Liquidation or markdown suggestions for slow movers
You still upload the final PO or transfer order into ERP or WMS—but the heavy planning logic is handled by AI.
Ask AI:
“Based on forecast and stock positions, generate a replenishment plan for all 42 stores. Respect the MOQ. Flag stockouts.”
4. Predict Stockouts Before They Happen
Instead of discovering stockouts during morning huddles, AI in supply chain and logistics helps teams spot risks early—before stock actually runs out.
AI analyses your existing Excel data (current stock, sales trends, and inbound supply) to highlight:
- SKUs likely to run out in the next 5–10 days
- fast movers whose demand is rising faster than planned
- sudden demand spikes that can disrupt replenishment cycles
- vendor delays that may impact future availability
No BI dashboards needed—just your updated Excel file.
AI then summarizes these risks using a simple priority heatmap:
-
Red = stockout imminent, immediate action required
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Yellow = potential risk if trends continue
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Green = stock levels stable
This allows planners to intervene early—adjust replenishment, reallocate stock, or expedite supply—before stores escalate issues or sales are lost.
5. Use AI to Create Integrated Views Across Teams
AI helps unify these views—one of the most practical applications of AI in supply chain management today. AI can merge:
- Demand history
- Current stock
- Inbound pipeline
- Vendor constraints
- Warehouse capacity
- Budget limits
The output is a single, integrated planning sheet, auto-generated every week.
6. AI Can Recommend the Best Inventory Policies
Based on each SKU’s behaviour, demand variability, lead times, and movement patterns, AI can recommend the most suitable inventory policy for that item—rather than applying one rule across everything.
AI can suggest:
- Periodic vs continuous replenishment, depending on demand stability
- EOQ vs Min-Max logic based on order size constraints and cost trade-offs
- Safety stock levels aligned to service level targets and demand uncertainty
- Reorder points that account for lead-time variability
- Review frequency based on how fast or slow a SKU moves
This is especially valuable for teams without advanced planning tools or formal inventory science support, helping them apply best-practice inventory logic automatically using their existing Excel data.
7. Use AI to Simulate “What If” Scenarios
AI makes scenario planning accessible—even in Excel-driven environments.
You can instantly simulate:
- What if demand jumps 30% during the festive season?
- What if a new warehouse is added
- What if a vendor delays by 7 days?
- What if MOQ increases?
These simulations help leadership make faster, more confident decisions—without complex macros or VBA.
8. Automatically Generate Weekly Planning Reports
AI can turn weekly data dumps into clean, decision-ready insights:
- Store and warehouse performance summaries
- Top gainers and decliners
- Fill rate analysis
- Ageing stock alerts
- Margin leakage indicators
This alone can save planners 4–6 hours every week.
AI is the Planning Assistant You Didn’t Know You Needed
Even without deep integrations, AI and supply chain planning work remarkably well together.
AI can transform Excel-driven planning by:
- Cleaning data
- Forecasting demand
- Recommending allocations
- Preventing stockouts
- Merging multi-team data
- Simulating scenarios
- Generating reports
It effectively becomes a virtual supply chain analyst—always available, always consistent.
If you want help building AI-enabled planning workflows tailored for Excel-first organisations, reach out to us at Pyrops WMS.
We’re building practical, plug-and-play solutions for teams starting their AI journey in supply chain and warehouse management.