Multi-Agent Systems and Foundation Models Enable Autonomous Supply Chains: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The demand for resilient and flexible supply chains has become even more apparent in the face of disruptions such as the COVID-pandemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. Whilst multi-agent system approaches have been proposed to increase resilience in supply chains for more than two decades, their development remains limited due to their difficulty of implementation and black box nature. The emergence of modern AI approaches including foundation models, enables the creation of generalist agents with multi-faceted decision-making capabilities. This opens up opportunities to create supply chain systems with self-orchestrating capabilities and heightened resilience, in a way that is human understandable, through natural language text. However, unlike areas such as healthcare and finance, the application of modern agent technology in the supply chain domain is under explored. This paper thus aims to conceptually explore this less studied domain, investigating the convergence between foundation models, multi-agent systems, and supply chain management. We discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from this convergence for enabling autonomous supply chains, and propose key future research topics to advance this convergence.