Data, systems and the supply chain digital twin

What does an agent actually stand on?

An agent does not operate on a model alone. It operates on the data, systems, processes, and tools around it: ERP, WMS, TMS, MES, event streams, master data, contracts, and the connections between them. This pillar examines that foundation. What information is structured or unstructured, what is accessible, what is missing, and what an agent is permitted to read, change, or trigger.

We explore retrieval, tool interfaces, master data, and cross-system reasoning, as well as the role of supply chain digital twins in developing and evaluating agents. A digital twin can provide a valuable experimental environment, but its scope and fidelity must be explicit: a model that reproduces relevant data structures and constraints is not the same as a physical plant or an operating supply chain.

The objective is to understand what the data and systems layer must provide for an agent to produce reliable, auditable, and useful supply chain decisions and where limitations in that foundation become limitations of the agent itself.