The supply chain is only becoming more complex—and every disruption creates a ripple effect that impacts other players. At SAP Sapphire, Christian Klein, CEO, SAP, shined a light on the true challenges the supply chain is facing. Some at the event even suggest up to 97% of our supply chains got disrupted in the last two years. What is needed today more than ever is for supply chains to become more flexible to serve the personalized needs of consumers. Enter generative AI (artificial intelligence).
Before we talk about the supply chain, let’s take a closer look at how technology has advanced in the last few years. As one example, launched last year, Joule is SAP’s generative AI platform, and it can quickly sort and contextualize data from multiple systems to advance automation and improve decisionmaking. Now, Joule is embedded into SAP S/4HANA Cloud solutions and others including SAP Build and SAP Integration Suite. By year-end, expansion will include SAP Ariba and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions as well.
Partner, Partner, Partner
Perhaps some of the biggest news coming out of SAP Sapphire was all the partnership announcements. At the event, SAP announced plans to further broaden Joule’s scope by integrating it with Microsoft Copilot. The objective here is to provide even richer insights. The companies say the deep, bi-directional integration gives users a unified experience built right into the flow of work. Ultimately, this will allow access to information from interactions with business applications in SAP and Microsoft 365.
As another example, SAP and Google Cloud are expanding their partnership, using Business AI. The objective here is to help enterprises better predict and mitigate supply-chain risks. If risks can be predicted, then those disruptions we are talking about can be minimized. The companies will integrate Joule and the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution with Google Cloud’s Gemini models AI assistant and Google Cloud Cortex Framework’s data foundation.
Of course, these are only two examples. The list of partnerships is long, offering greater opportunities for large language models, contextual understanding, and ultimately creating stronger supply chains.
What about that Supply Chain?
Let’s explore one example of a company’s supply chain for a minute: NVIDIA. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA, says “NVIDIA builds one of the most complex systems in the world and we have one of the most complex supply chains in the world.”
The company builds AI supercomputers, AI factories, GPUs, CPUs, NVLink Switch, Ethernet NICs, Ethernet switches, InfiniBand switches, and more enormously complicated systems. Huang said he is in Taiwan to unite the entire ecosystem.
Let’s explore just how large this company’s supply chain truly is. The company’s latest Blackwell system has more than 600,000 parts. “All of that entire supply chain, all of our bill of materials, all of our forecasting systems, all of our build plans, all of our 600,000 parts, some 40 different manufacturers, all managed under SAP,” says Huang, indicating the entire world is on Klein’s shoulders.
All joking aside, what SAP provides NVIDIA and the partnership between the two companies is a good case study for how to shore up the supply chain. SAP and NVIDIA are embedding technologies into enterprise applications.
For instance, as SAP trains Joule to serve as an AI assistant for the RISE with SAP solution implementations, NVIDIA’s AI models sift through SAP consulting assets to provide relevant and precise answers to implementation-related questions.
As another example, as SAP embeds Joule in the ABAP Cloud model to generate ABAP code for SAP developers, NVIDIA’s infrastructure will run, scale, and manage SAP’s generative AI model for ABAP code generation.
We also see as SAP includes generative AI in the SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation solution, NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs (application programming interfaces) will enable the simulation of complex manufacturing products and configurations as industrial digital twins.
The opportunities are boundless with generative AI—and we certainly have new opportunities to minimize disruptions in our supply chains. As Huang proudly states, “This is the beginning of a new computing age, the beginning of a new industrial revolution.”
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