Artificial intelligence (AI) agents hold strong promise for helping logistics professionals make better decisions by analyzing massive data sets at lighting speed, but one thing slowing the spread of the technology is that many people are not willing to blindly trust its results.
To address user skepticism about agentic AI, supply chain software vendor Manhattan Associates today released a tool that reveals the reasoning behind AI-driven forecasts, recommendations, and inventory decisions in plain business language.
The “Sightline” tool—a new capability within Manhattan’s ActivePlanning suite—explains the “why” behind projected outcomes, the company said. It gives planners forensic-level understanding of the factors shaping forecasts, orders, and inventory positions, including forecast inputs, safety stock decisions, vendor minimums, lead times, promotional effects, fulfillment shifts, and network movements.According to Manhattan, advanced AI forecasting can often feel like a black box that requires a data scientist to do the analysis, so practitioners may have difficulty understanding exactly why it’s doing what it’s doing.
Launched at Manhattan’s annual “Momentum” user conference held in Las Vegas this week, Sightline establishes a new mandate for planning software by embedding explainability directly into the planning system, so users can investigate outcomes where decisions are made. And those decisions can have major implications, since forecasts get adjusted by AI, replenishment recommendations come from AI, and allocation decisions get nudged by AI.
