Part 10: AI in your industry, and on the floor

Where does AI help a distribution or logistics business?

Written lesson · about 4 minutes to read

The short answer

AI helps a distributor most on paperwork and questions: reading each order once and drafting the shipping documents, answering status questions from your systems, and proposing carriers and routes. Fix the inventory count first, because every tool reads it, and keep a person on the exceptions and the carrier decision.

Three things to remember

01Read each order once and draft the packing list, labels and other shipping documents from it.
02Fix the inventory count first, because every other tool reads it and repeats its errors.
03Tools propose carriers and answer status questions, while the shipping desk decides and handles exceptions.

Orders and documents, keyed once

Customer orders arrive as PDFs, emailed spreadsheets, portal downloads and phone calls, and someone types each one into the system. An AI reads every format for the customer, ship-to address, lines, quantities and dates, checks them against your price list and the customer's terms, and drafts the order for release. The person on the desk releases orders instead of typing them.

From the order it drafts the packing list, labels, bill of lading, commercial invoice and any customs declaration, in the format the carrier or the border wants. The order that does not match the price list, the quantity ten times the usual and the new ship-to address are flagged for a person to look at.

The count comes first

The customer was promised forty because the system said forty, and the shelf had twelve. Availability, reordering and routing all read the count, and no AI fixes a bad one. A smarter tool only makes a wrong count wrong faster. Scanning at receipt, pick and ship, and a cycle count people actually do (a few products counted every day instead of everything once a year), come before the rest.

Once the system watches those transactions, it can point at products whose movements no longer add up and list the ones to count today, weighted by value and by how soon they are promised. When the system's number is the rack's number, reorder points that follow demand and lead time become a real improvement, suggested by the tool and decided by the buyer.

Carriers, routes and status questions

For each shipment, a tool can propose the carriers and services that meet the customer's date and rules, ranked by cost, with transit time and past on-time record beside each. The shipping desk still picks, because it knows the customer whose dock closes at two and the driver who knows the site. Feed the carrier's invoices back in, so surprise charges such as residential delivery fees are flagged.

The question 'where is my order' takes a person several minutes and several screens, many times a day. An AI can read the order system, the warehouse and the carrier, and answer in one sentence at any hour. It can also warn a customer of a delay or a short pick before they ask, with a person releasing any notice that promises something.

What stays with a person

A person releases the documents, and exceptions go to a person first. The lost shipment, the damaged one and the customer who is really calling to say they are moving their business all need someone who starts with the whole history in front of them. Read a sample of clean orders every week too, because a tool that reads a hundred orders a day will be wrong somewhere.

Start with read access to your systems: the warehouse system, order entry in your ERP, the carrier accounts and the shared mailbox. The AI reads and drafts, and a person releases. Letting it write to stock levels comes last, if ever, and only after its drafts have been consistently right.

Where to start this week

Start with the count. Pick the twenty products that are most often wrong, count them, and find the habit behind each gap: a receipt booked against the wrong line, a pick taken from the next bin, a return put back unprocessed. Fixing those habits shortens the list of wrong products over a quarter.

Then choose one document flow, usually orders coming in, and write down today's number, such as keying errors reaching the dock in a month or status calls a day. Let a tool read and draft while a person releases everything, and compare the number after a few weeks.

Next lessonWhere does AI help construction and the trades?

More in part 10

Next step

Where does this fit your business?

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