AI assisted decision making is not about replacing your judgment. It is about improving the clarity of your thinking by giving you better information, faster. In supply chain and operations, decisions often involve forecasting, risk, trade offs, timing, and incomplete data. When you add speed and complexity, the pressure increases and mistakes become more expensive.
Young professionals who learn to use AI tools early gain a major advantage. They understand patterns faster, identify risks earlier, and compare options more accurately. This helps them contribute at a level that feels beyond their years.
AI helps with awareness and options. Human judgment makes the final call. When the two work together, the quality of your decision making improves dramatically.
Earlier in my career, I worked on a project involving demand planning for a set of products that had irregular sales patterns. The traditional spreadsheets we used were slow to update and required a lot of manual interpretation. When we tested early machine learning models, something changed. The models did not make the decisions for us, but they quickly highlighted patterns we could not see on our own.
For example, they showed correlations between certain sales spikes and external events we had never considered. They ranked the biggest drivers of forecast variability. They flagged possible stock out risks two or three weeks earlier than our old process.
This gave us time. Time to plan, time to adjust, time to communicate. My judgment still determined what action we took, but the AI accelerated my understanding.
Young professionals today have access to far more powerful tools than the ones I used back then. If they learn how to use them thoughtfully, they will grow their decision making skills much faster.
Steps or Takeaways
1. Start by asking better questions
AI delivers the most value when you give it clear, specific questions. For example:
Weak question: “Help me forecast next month.”
Stronger question: “Given last year's seasonality, current order trends, and recent promotions, what are three possible demand scenarios for next month and the risks within each scenario?”
Weak question: “What should I do about this inventory issue?”
Stronger question: “Here are the current inventory levels, lead times, and demand projections. What are the top three risks if I do nothing, and what mitigation options create the least disruption?”
AI performs best when you set the boundaries. Asking precise questions strengthens your own thinking as well.
2. Use AI to compare options, not choose for you
Young professionals often freeze because they feel too much pressure to find the perfect answer. AI can help break the mental block by generating multiple options to evaluate.
For example, if you need to choose between two suppliers, you can ask AI to compare them across:
- Lead time risk
- Quality data
- Cost volatility
- Contract flexibility
- Historical performance patterns
The AI will not know your internal priorities or constraints, but it can surface information quickly. You still make the decision, but your starting point is stronger.
3. Validate everything with your own judgment
One mistake I see is blind trust. AI can be helpful, but it can also be confidently wrong. The most successful professionals think about the following questions:
- Does this recommendation align with what I know about the business
- Does it conflict with real world constraints
- Does the logic make sense
- Does anything seem unrealistic or too perfect
AI is a thinking partner, not an authority. When you combine its speed with your understanding of the workplace, you become more reliable and more trusted.
4. Use AI to strengthen your communication skills
One underrated advantage of AI assisted decision making is how it helps you communicate clearly under pressure. Many operations and supply chain decisions require explaining your reasoning to senior leaders who care about clarity, accuracy, and speed.
You can use AI tools to practice summarizing:
- Your reasoning
- Your options
- Your chosen action
- Your expected results
- Your risks and mitigations
For example, you can ask AI to help you turn a long explanation into a short executive summary. This reinforces the habit of structured communication. Professionals who can explain complex decisions in a simple way grow faster and earn trust earlier.
5. Learn how to spot patterns and anomalies
AI is excellent at finding patterns in large data sets that humans cannot analyze quickly. Use it to help you:
- Identify spikes or dips in performance
- Find relationships between operational events and outcomes
- Detect anomalies in supplier behavior
- Flag early warning indicators in demand
Over time, you will train your own judgment to recognize these patterns without relying on the tool. AI speeds up the learning curve by exposing you to more examples than you could process alone.
6. Study how senior leaders use AI
Young professionals often think AI is a technical tool, but the most successful leaders use it to support strategy. They use AI to:
- Test scenarios before making a decision
- Identify major risks before they spread
- Compare trade offs before choosing a direction
- Understand the impact of small operational shifts
- Improve forecasting accuracy across complex environments
Watch how leaders ask questions. Study how they interpret outputs. Observe how they combine AI insights with business context. This is how you learn to use the tools thoughtfully instead of mechanically.
7. Practice on real problems, not theoretical ones
The fastest way to improve your AI assisted decision making is to apply it to problems you already face in your daily work. Examples include:
- Preparing a weekly update
- Reviewing a KPI that dropped
- Recommending a process improvement
- Identifying bottlenecks in an operational flow
- Prioritizing your workload
- Supporting a team member with a problem they are facing
AI becomes far more valuable when it helps you solve real issues instead of general exercises.
8. Build a personal system for learning new tools
Technology changes constantly. If you want long term growth, create a small weekly routine that helps you stay ahead. It may include:
- Reviewing one article about AI in supply chain
- Testing one new tool
- Practicing a scenario
- Comparing two AI outputs to evaluate quality
- Writing a short summary of what you learned
A small weekly system compounds quickly. It also helps you stay adaptable, which is one of the most important traits in modern operations careers.
9. Treat AI as a collaborator
The future belongs to professionals who know how to work with AI in the same way they work with colleagues. AI can:
- Challenge your assumptions
- Reveal blind spots
- Present overlooked options
- Strengthen your reasoning
- Improve your clarity
- Reduce your decision fatigue
The more you treat AI as a partner instead of a calculator, the more value you get from it.
