Jennifer McKeehan

Companies are rapidly integrating generative AI into procurement and sourcing decisions. The promise is obvious. AI can read thousands of pages of supplier proposals faster than any human team, summarize technical requirements in seconds, and create the appearance of consistency and objectivity in evaluation. But there is an important distinction managers are starting to overlook. The same AI system that performs extremely well at identifying whether a supplier meets minimum requirements may perform much less reliably when judging which supplier is truly better. Recent research published in the Journal of Business Logistics examined this issue by comparing how large language models evaluated supplier bids against evaluations completed by experienced procurement professionals. It analyzed 123 supplier proposals tied to 31 public procurement projects conducted by the State of Ohio between 2023 and 2024. The projects involved complex IT services contracts, many containing large, text-heavy bid packages requiring evaluative judgment rather than simple arithmetic comparisons. The researchers tested three reasoning-oriented AI models: OpenAI o3, Grok-3-Mini, and DeepSeek R1. They then compared their evaluations against human procurement scores. The findings revealed a surprisingly clear pattern. AI performed well when evaluating compliance signals. These are signals tied to baseline qualifications and technical requirements. Does…

Hot off the Press! We’ve got all the latest news in supply chain this week right here. Read up and make sure you’re in the know about everything happening here on Supply Chain Now, including all the latest podcasts, livestreams, & more!   On Monday, Supply Chain Now hosts Jeff Miller (Supply Chain Is The Business) and Jamin Alvidrez (Logistics and Beyond!) sat down with Wayne Cragg – a professional driver, photographer and social media influencer.     On Tuesday, Bobby Holland from U.S. Bank and Frank Hurst of Roadrunner Freight shared the results of the on the Q4 2020 report, interpreting what they may mean for the economy and the shipping industry in the short and longer term with Greg White and Scott Luton     On Wednesday, Mario Rivera of ID Logistics joined the Supply Chain Now podcast to talk about creative, real-world problem solving with Co-hosts Greg White and Scott Luton   On Thursday, Scott, Greg, & Karin sat down with Lee Klaskow from Bloomberg Intelligence, one of the leading industry analysts, especially as it relates to logistics and transportation   On Friday, Scott Luton tackled a variety of developments including from this past week on the…