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ChatGPT Comes to the Supply Chain

Inspectorio is hopping on the ChatGPT bandwagon with the debut of the Inspectorio CAPA recommender, a tool designed to marry collaborative intelligence with generative artificial intelligence to deliver guidance on corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to supply chain professionals, thus reducing the need for time-consuming manual investigations into product quality and compliance.

The AI-powered CAPA recommender tool is built to improve supply chain efficiency by addressing critical pain points in the quality control process, specifically related to the research, validation and development of corrective action plans. The solution fortifies Inspectorio’s suite of supply chain quality and compliance solutions for brands, retailers, suppliers, manufacturers and factories.

Leveraging data from across its supplier ecosystem, the tool offers personalized automated recommendations to help improve the speed and quality of these proposed action plans, and overall decision making in the supply chain.

With the ChatGPT-powered solution, end users can detect patterns and trends from historical data and the Inspectorio ecosystem, and better identify the root causes of defects or non-conformities in products, Inspectorio says—all via natural language processing (NLP) capabilities that provide information in a way similar to human conversations.

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Additionally, the platform offers enable greater transparency, trust and reputation management among partners.

Proponents of generative AI often point to the technology’s ability to learn and adapt over time as its primary advantage in business. As organizations across the supply chain collect more data from partners and encounter new challenges, generative AI models can continuously refine their predictions and recommendations, ensuring that supply chain optimization efforts remain effective in the face of changing circumstances.

“As a pioneer in the supply chain field, Inspectorio is leading the way into a new era of generative AI, where physical and digital worlds converge,” said Carlos Moncayo, co-founder and CEO of Inspectorio, in a statement. “The industry-first launch of the CAPA recommender furthers our mission to streamline processes, accelerate supply chain performance, inspire innovation and push technological boundaries, enabling our clients to be more efficient and collaborative across their ecosystem.”

When it integrates the recommender into its quality management system, Inspectorio Sight, the company will continue to expand generative AI into other products and uses, including AI-generated quality management and compliance improvement plans, and sustainability coaching programs based on assessment results.

“Our generative AI solution gives customers a unique competitive advantage by leveraging leading technologies in tandem with Inspectorio’s vast proprietary data assets across the factory and supplier ecosystem,” said Damon Pezaro, chief product officer at Inspectorio, in a statement. “This technology will help customers improve their supply chain management processes and deploy risk mitigation strategies efficiently, while providing a comprehensive view of their supply chain operations that enables data-driven decisions to make a positive impact on their business.”

Pezaro highlighted the company’s ability to drive innovation and build more transparent, sustainable and efficient supply chains, calling the integration of generative AI “a step forward in this mission.”

Recently, Inspectorio has also been furthering its AI ambitions in another area: laboratory testing. Earlier this year, the firm unveiled Inspectorio LabSync, a laboratory testing management solution designed to digitize and optimize the product compliance and testing process. LabSync centralizes and standardizes testing data from third-party laboratories and factory in-house laboratories, giving each party full visibility into every step of the testing process. From there, AI helps Inspectorio recommend when a laboratory test is needed or not, thereby reducing overtesting.

The company’s three core offerings within its technology suite include Inspectorio Sight, compliance and sustainability management solution Inspectorio Rise, and production oversight solution Inspectorio Tracking. In November 2022, the Minneapolis company launched Inspectorio DocuFlow, which was created to enhance these processes by streamlining and reducing manual work through the automation of document management workflows.

Used by over 8,000 customers globally, including Target and apparel manufacturers Delta Galil and Interloop, Inspectorio has been a major proponent of getting out in front of modern technologies to help companies manage supply chain risk through digitized quality and sustainability programs.

Co-founder and managing director Fernando Moncayo said during last October’s Sourcing Journal Fall Summit that the company’s goal is to become an “operating system” to provide users with a single source of truth, replacing more traditional data-sharing methods like Excel spreadsheets and emails. With the deployment of a generative AI-based chatbot feature, it appears the cloud-based supply chain tech company is putting its best foot forward to support this goal.

But beyond Inspectorio, the introduction of more ChatGPT-powered technologies could bring more visibility into the production chain for all stakeholders in a time when they still drastically need it. According to a 2021 McKinsey & Co. study of senior supply chain executives, only 2 percent of business could map their supply chain in Tier 3 and beyond.