Process Context In our fleet size of more than 50 plants, we use SAP IBP as an AI-enabled planning engine for forward spare parts demand planning, replenishment strategies and inventory strategy for all operations and maintenance. We manage roughly 200 Million Euro, 78000 SKUs in inventory. Let me explain what IBP does, It autonomously calculates, recommends replenishment strategies (VB, PD, ND), and planning paraments such as safety stock, Reorder point, and Max stock, using consumption history, PM demand, variability and lead times. Currently, for us, the process already runs with minimal manual interventions. So the real challenge for us is not making AI work, it is ensuring it continues to work as intended over time. How We Prevent Drift While Keeping the Process Autonomous We follow the simple principle, Automation with explicit guardrails. Any IBP recommendation that changes planning parameters for items by more than +/- 30% from the current setting automatically triggers a workflow approval in SAP. Our workflow goes to Planning manager, inventory controller, Final approval from PGM & Myself. We have build a clear summary in approval process, along with raw numbers, it shows number of SKUs impacted, Net Inventory Impact on Max stock (Positive/Negative), Risks. This gives completely details to reviewers, to approve, reject, fine tune recommendations based on the actual business context, In our process AI proposes, humans decide only when risk crosses a defined threshold. What We Monitor To Ensure The Process Stays Healthy We simply monitor the business behaviour & outcomes. If I say very specifically, we look at frequency of parameter changes exceeding the 30% threshold, Repeated SKUs entering the workflow approval, Manual override trend, Inventory vs Service levels, Gap between IBP recommendation & executed parameters. How We Respond When Performance Starts To Slip When we see the drift, we don’t fix the AI engine, we review the decision logic, PFEP. Typically we revalidate the demand classification, Lead time assumptions, ABC calculations. We do the corrections at the policy & logic level, not through the repeated manual intervention. Evidence That This Approach Works Our this structure helped us to optimize around 12000 SKUs, delivering 3 M Euro Inventory reduction, 10 Million Euro Cost Avoidance in a year. Review cycle time has been reduced by 80%. Now process auto approves 70% of recommendations. Bottom Line In my view, AI enabled process stays effective over time not because it is constantly supervised, but because decision rights, thresholds, and escalation rules are designed upfront. We let SAP IBP run high volume, repeatable decisions, while we intervene only when changes signal the real business risk, and then we judge system health by outcomes, not by how often people touch it, this shows the clear example of how autonomy & control coexist with AI delivering the value not drifting the process.