"When the Strait of Hormuz was blocked, red flags went up for global logistics supply. Questions from customers asking how to overcome the emergency situation flooded into SAP. We proposed a new concept platform called Supply Chain Orchestration (SCO) utilizing artificial intelligence as the solution."
Hagen Hoibach, Chief Marketing Officer of SAP's Supply Chain Management division, said this in an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 19th.
SAP is a Germany-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system developer. The company holds the top global market share in ERP, with 99 of Fortune's top 100 companies among its clients. SAP's revenue last year approached 36.8 billion euros (approximately 63 trillion won). SAP has been integrating AI into its ERP services since launching its enterprise AI agent "Joule" in 2023.
The main topic of the interview was the supply chain crisis caused by Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and corporate-level responses. The SCO proposed by CMO Hoibach is a solution that finds optimal supply chain management methods by combining and separating automated AI agents for each scenario. SAP has more than 70 automated AI agents across seven processes including product planning, production, and logistics. AI agents assigned to specific roles such as engineering, production management, and international logistics management form task forces in real time according to user requirements.
"Alerting users to supply chain crisis situations, presenting alternative scenarios, and providing estimated cost increases for each scenario are all executed automatically without human intervention," CMO Hoibach explained. He added that even in logistics crises caused by international conflicts such as the Hormuz Strait blockade, "users can check within the platform whether there are alternatives to readjust transportation routes or completely restructure transportation plans."
SAP explains that SCO can be utilized in various supply chain management areas including changes in U.S. tariff policies and semiconductor chip shortages. "SCO is also being used by companies to prepare for risks when planning production and supply," CMO Hoibach said. "Even in normal times, it is used to continuously run supply chain simulations to review and optimize plans."