The consulting firm interviewed 200 European logistics and supply chain management experts for its analysis . According to the results , only 42% of respondents from the manufacturing sector have their own employees working on transport planning and monitoring, while the figure for retailers was only slightly higher at 53%. Only 35% of manufacturing companies have their own transport management system. Even less, 31%, use AI microservices for this purpose. Those already using them aim to improve delivery reliability or save freight costs in doing so. BearingPoint expects the importance of AI tools in transport management to increase significantly in the coming years.

A survey conducted by the software manufacturer Inform in 2018 had already revealed that AI has led a rather shadowy existence in logistics to date. The reasons given for the sluggish implementation included lack of know-how, high costs, inadequate IT infrastructure and limited time resources.