Translytics was founded on 12 October 2021 with one goal: move supply chain teams, from planners to the boardroom, from hunting for problems to making decisions. Five years later, we are launching the next step. Ask TX, the AI assistant in TranslytiX, lets anyone on the team ask a question in plain language and get the answer, the reason and the next action. It is the AI assistant for supply chain planning we have been building toward, and it stands on everything that came before it.
This post tells the story in three parts: what we built, what we are launching, and where it goes next.
Act 1: What we built (2021–2026)
We kept the processes supply chain teams already know (demand planning, inventory planning, production planning and scheduling, dispatch planning and network design) and made every screen end in a decision, not a plan to export.
That happened in layers, and each layer has its own value.
- Pages and analytics: what's happening. One view across demand, inventory, production and dispatch, so nobody has to stitch reports together before the real work starts.
- Insights and alerts: what's going wrong and why. AI flags the item, location or order at risk, with the root cause: a demand spike or drop, a production delay, a late purchase order.
- Recommended actions: what to do. Actions worked out with operations research rather than rules of thumb, so they respect capacity, lead times and service targets. Expedite, rebalance stock between warehouses, resequence production, change an allocation.
- Predicted failures: what's about to go wrong. Warnings before the problem lands, such as a demand spike that will cause a shortage in three weeks if nothing changes.
- Network design: is the network itself set up right? Scenario models for which plant makes what, which warehouse serves which market and where to add capacity, each with a business case. For one network design client, service levels rose from 63% to 78%.
Under these layers sit two ways of working. Demand planning is proactive: it sets the plan ahead, with 10%+ better forecast accuracy that translates into 5–10% less inventory. Inventory planning is reactive: a digital twin of inventory watches for disruptions (a demand spike or drop, a production delay, a delayed PO) and alerts the team with recommended actions.
Each layer serves a different role. Planners get exceptions with actions. Heads of supply chain get one view across demand, inventory, production, dispatch and the network, and run S&OP from the same numbers. COOs and plant heads get schedules re-planned in minutes. CFOs see which stock protects service and which locks up capital. CEOs and MDs see service, capital and capacity in balance.
Act 2: What we are launching: Ask TX
Ask TX connects all of it. A planner, a head of supply chain or a CFO asks a question in plain language and gets the answer at their fingertips.
What makes it different is what sits behind it. Ask TX does not just read raw tables. A decision engine, combining AI and operations research analytics, runs in the background and computes the insights, alerts and recommended actions. That engine grounds Ask TX: it answers from computed work, so an answer comes with the reason and the next action, not just a number.
Questions teams ask Ask TX:
- "What's our days of supply?" The answer comes with a plain-English explanation of how it is calculated and a link to the page where the figure lives.
- "Which warehouses have the highest days of supply?" Shown as a chart or a table you can switch between and download.
- "What is our total inventory?" Value, units and locations as of the latest data, with follow-up questions offered.
- "Give me inventory by warehouse." Each warehouse's share, with the insight that matters, such as one site holding half the stock.
- "What does excess inventory mean?" A clear definition tied to the page where that number is tracked.
The point is not the chat window. It is that the planner who used to spend the morning in extracts and pivots now starts with the answer and the action, and the CFO who used to wait for the monthly review can ask today.
How it fits your IT: Ask TX works with the LLM your IT team approves. It runs inside TranslytiX, on top of the ERP you already use, whether that is SAP, Oracle or another system.
Availability: Ask TX is available inside TranslytiX as a paid add-on. Pricing is quote-based.
Act 3: What's next: the road to autonomous supply chains
We see planning moving through four stages: see what is happening, understand why, decide what to do, and act. Today TranslytiX covers seeing, understanding and deciding, with people in control.
The direction is clear. Routine decisions will increasingly run on their own, and teams will spend their time on exceptions and judgment calls. This is a journey, not a switch, and most companies are early on it. Gartner predicts only 5% of organizations will make at least 10% of their supply chain planning decisions autonomously by 2030 (Gartner). ISG expects only 13% of agentic workflows in planning to run fully autonomously by late 2027 (ISG).
We agree with that pace. Teams first need to see what is happening, understand what is wrong and trust the recommended action. Only then does it make sense to let routine decisions run on their own, within limits the team sets. We will take that road step by step, with each client's team deciding how far and how fast.
Thank you
Five years ago this was an idea. Today it runs in the planning teams of manufacturers and brands with complex supply chains, from fast-growing companies to large listed enterprises. Thank you to our team, who built every layer of it; to our clients, who trusted us with their most important decisions; and to our partners. The next five years start today.
See Ask TX on your own data. Request a demo or see use cases.