Agent sets order quantities and inventory from the production plan

Added 2026-10-14

Role

planner / buyer

The problem

material orders and stock levels are set by hand or by old min/max settings that don't follow the actual production plan, so the plant carries too much inventory of some parts and runs short of others.

Step by step

Export the production plan (what will be built, when) and the bill of materials for those products.
Export current stock, open purchase orders, supplier lead times and minimum order quantities.
Have the agent calculate net requirements per part and per week, and propose order quantities and dates.
Compare the proposal with today's min/max or reorder settings and flag parts that are overstocked or at risk of shortage.
A planner or buyer approves the proposed orders before they are released in the ERP.
Re-run whenever the production plan changes and track inventory value and shortages every month.

Tools

Not named in source; ERP/MRP data plus an LLM or planning agent

Result

An aircraft OEM cut active inventory by 30 percent, boosting EBIT by around $700 million (reported by McKinsey, company anonymized). The dollar figure reflects a very large manufacturer; an SME should expect a much smaller absolute impact.

As reported by the source; most figures are vendor or self-reported and not independently verified.

Try it yourself

You are a materials planner. Below is our production plan for the next [e.g. 12] weeks, the bill of materials, current stock, open purchase orders, and each part's supplier lead time and minimum order quantity. For each part, calculate weekly gross and net requirements, then propose purchase orders (quantity and order date) that avoid shortages while keeping stock as low as possible, with a safety stock of [e.g. 1 week of demand]. Output a table per part and a short list of parts that are currently overstocked or at risk of shortage. Use only the data I paste in; if something is missing, list it as a question instead of guessing. Do not send, order, post or change anything in any system: produce drafts for my review and approval.

Production plan:
[paste]

BOM:
[paste]

Stock, open POs, lead times, MOQs:
[paste]

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Sources

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/redefining-procurement-performance-in-the-era-of-agentic-ai