Foundations of agency in supply chains
What, exactly, is an AI agent and what is it not?
Before we can evaluate what agentic AI can do, we need a clear definition of what an agent actually is. This pillar establishes the vocabulary and concepts needed to distinguish genuine agency from conventional automation, scripted workflows, chatbots, and AI features marketed as “agents.”
We examine the building blocks of agency in supply chains: goal-directed behaviour, planning, tool use, memory and state, adaptation, constraints, observability, and human oversight. We explore how these capabilities apply across planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, and inventory and where the boundaries of autonomy should remain.
The objective is simple: create a common, practical definition of agency that allows claims about agentic AI to be evaluated consistently rather than accepted at face value.
The Anatomy of Agency
Coming soon!
What makes agency possible and what does that mean for AI?
This article will explore agency from its psychological and philosophical foundations, examining the dimensions that shape human goal-directed behavior, autonomy, intentionality, adaptation, and self-regulation.
It then asks a critical question for agentic AI: which of these dimensions can meaningfully be translated into artificial systems and which remain fundamentally human?
What Agentic AI Actually Means in Late 2026
What makes an AI system truly agentic?
The word agent is now used for everything from chatbots and copilots to autonomous workflows. But for supply chain leaders, the label matters less than the underlying capability.
This article proposes a practical way to distinguish agentic AI from conventional automation: a system should be able to pursue a goal through a dynamic loop of perceiving its environment, selecting actions, observing outcomes, and adapting within defined constraints.
The result is a simple principle for evaluating agentic AI in supply chains: don’t ask whether a system is an agent, ask how much agency it actually has, what it can do with that agency, and what happens when it is wrong.