Forbes: ChatGPT--The Latest Tailwind For Operations

Written by Ratheesh Raveendran | Apr 13, 2023 8:41:46 PM

Ratheesh is the COO of OpsVeda, an operational Intelligence software company. His interests include impact of technologies on Supply Chains. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives.

In 2019, the present crowd was amused by Sam Altman’s statement that ChatGPT will figure out how to monetize itself, but he was prescient—lots of users are asking OpenAI’s ChatGPT about how it can help them in their roles. We can debate how useful the answers are and whether a Large Language Model is really “generally intelligent,” but the application has seen unprecedently quick adoption and has generated a lot of excitement.

Keeping with the trend, I also asked ChatGPT how it can help operations managers. Given the generic nature of my question, the answer, unsurprisingly, was broad—about its ability to analyze data and suggest ways to reduce costs, increase profitability, optimize inventory, provide marketing guidance, answer customer queries and so on. No, it is not a case of ChatGPT having delusions of grandeur. It can indeed do a lot for the operations manager. Let’s look at three things it can do today.

Democratizing Data Analysis

If data is the new oil, supply chains are one of the largest oil reserves. Transaction records, regulatory filings, IoT readings, track-and-trace mandates, website logs and more—there are boatloads of data that operations managers can dig into. However, despite the ubiquity of “citizen data scientist” tools, data analysis remains a task for the trained professional. This changes with ChatGPT.

The machine learning models behind ChatGPT have been trained on a large corpus of text on a wide range of topics, including supply chain, data analysis and programming. This means that the operations manager can just load up data that she gets every day and ask questions in plain English. For example, she could throw in historic orders and ask for forecasts for the coming weeks. Or, if she wants to do some analysis in Excel, she can even ask ChatGPT to prepare the formulas....