Ortec senior vice president Mathew Witte says the “last mile” will benefit from artificial intelligence and machine learning collaboration and optimized data.
At Ortec, Witte focuses on middle- and final-mile supply chain operations, and artificial intelligence and machine learning are of great customer interest. “Everyone has been talking about it for years, and today it’s finally coming to the fore,” he says. Many of his customer base, and many of the prospects he speaks to, are excited about aligning technology with their business strategies.
Recruitment is risky, however. Witte points out that while the legacy system had been around for his 40+ years, worked well, and delivered a good and quick return on investment, it was more or less “forgotten” when it came to data management. increase. “Data is what suffers the most,” he says. “You have to make sure your strategy is aligned, your data is aligned, your IT group is aligned so that everything works effectively. That’s the big challenge in deployment today.”
Witte stresses the need to make sure the data is cleaned up. “Whether it’s customer restrictions, requirements, vehicle sizes, capacity, general business rules, you have to make sure they’re clean first before enabling machine learning.”
Witte said any company can take advantage of AI and machine learning, depending on the scope of their needs. “Obviously, the deeper you want to go, the bigger the investment, but the more robust you are, the better prepared you are from an IT perspective and a corporate strategy perspective. That means companies, regardless of size, are the most prepared for that leap.”
