This week at Kinexions in Austin, we pulled back the curtain on the future of supply chain: AI agents. No longer just a concept, AI agents are real, and they have the potential to reshape how supply chain teams make decisions, move faster, and stay ahead of disruption.
What are AI agents?
For years, supply chain planners have relied on spreadsheets, tables, dashboards, and manual analysis to piece together answers, –which could take days or even weeks. Want to understand the impact of a tariff change? That used to mean thinking about what data is relevant, sifting through that data, performing analysis, and hoping you make the right decision before the situation shifts again.
Not anymore. This week, Kinaxis Chief Product Officer, Andrew Bell, unveiled AI agents within Kinaxis Maestro, our supply chain orchestration platform.
With AI agents, you can ask your supply chain a question and get an answer —instantly, directly within the platform. Think of AI agents as your digital co-workers, collaborating with you to solve today’s toughest challenges.
Take tariffs, for example. Instead of crunching numbers for hours, your AI agent can assess the impact in seconds, suggest the best alternative decision, and even execute it with your approval. What once took hours or even days now happens in seconds—within a few conversational chats—with the potential to save millions.
Building your own AI agent: Hands on at Kinexions
We didn’t just talk about AI agents at Kinexions—we let customers build their own.
Attendees got a hands-on experience designing AI agents that could interact with planning workbooks, delivering answers, custom visualizations like pie charts, and recommendations in seconds, all through Maestro’s simple, chat-based UX.
Solving supply shortages—faster than ever
One of the biggest pain points for supply chain teams today? Dealing with supply shortages.
On mainstage, Hanu Gadila, Senior Director, Global Supply Chain Planning – Product Line at Merck & Co., explored how AI agents could transform the way we handle supply shortages.
Today, planners often spend more than 50% of their time manually sorting through dashboards and filters to track down late supplies, identify alternatives, and coordinate fixes. But with AI agents, they could cut that effort by up to 80%, accelerating resolution while improving consistency and decision-making.
The bottom line
AI agents are not hype. This week at Kinexions, we showed what’s possible when decision making is as fast as a few simple questions and execution is just a click away. The future isn’t just automated—it’s conversational, collaborative, and faster than ever.
AI agents will be available in Maestro later this year. Stay tuned.