DATA & ANALYTICS moving the various different containers and factoring in customer preferred vendors – it’ s more than the cognitive capacity of pretty much any human I’ ve met could do with Excel.”
Maersk partnered with Keelvar to implement AI-powered sourcing optimisation and autonomous sourcing across all spend categories. The platform’ s advanced algorithms evaluate thousands of bids simultaneously, ensuring optimal value while balancing cost with sustainability goals.
The impact was immediate. Within the first month, Maersk completed 200 RFPs, a pace that would have been impossible without intelligent automation.
“ What used to take weeks now takes days, if not hours,” Adam notes.
Beyond speed, decision quality improved significantly. Advanced scenario analysis enabled previously impossible evaluations, while automation freed the team to focus on strategic initiatives.
“ We’ re not just sourcing faster; we’ re doing it better,” says Adam.
Predictive risk detection and supplier selection At Xometry Europe, a manufacturing marketplace, AI serves a different but equally critical function: identifying and mitigating supplier risks before they impact operations. The company has developed probabilistic models that predict order-level risks by assessing historical execution, technical complexity and contextual parameters.
“This data-driven matching significantly improves execution reliability and overall supply performance”
Iana Mashutina Director of Sourcing Xometry Europe
“ We actively use these risk predictions to identify the most suitable supplier for each order, taking into account its unique technical and engineering requirements,” says Iana Mashutina, Director of Sourcing at Xometry Europe.“ This data-driven matching significantly improves execution reliability and overall supply performance.”
The AI system scans unstructured data including internal notes before production jobs are dispatched. When it detects stop factors such as regional restrictions or compliance constraints, it prevents automated confirmation and routes orders to manual partner selection.
“ This conservative, safety-first approach reduces compliance and operational risks by ensuring that sensitive or complex orders are carefully reviewed before being shown to suppliers,” Iana explains.
Computer vision models are also being piloted to assess production photos and identify potential quality or packaging risks automatically, representing a shift from reactive issue handling to proactive prevention.
aimagazine. com 97