The Supply Chainer

Episode 121 of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast, hosted by Tom Raftery, features Simon Bezrukov, Chief AI Officer at Bristlecone. The discussion examines how agentic AI, LLMs, digital twins, forecasting, simulation, and governance are reshaping supply chain decision-making. Rather than treating AI as a replacement for operational expertise, the episode focuses on where automation creates value, where it introduces risk, and why human accountability remains central. The full

Nobody in the freight industry expected February to look like this. On 28 February, US and Israeli strikes on Iran effectively shut the world's most important oil and gas corridor within hours. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries around 20% of global petroleum and 20% of global LNG in normal times went from a busy maritime highway to a near-standstill. Ship transits fell from roughly 130 a day in February to just six in March. About 2,000 vessels are still sitting stranded in

Cyberattacks are no longer stopping at corporate networks. Increasingly, they are halting production lines, disrupting freight movement, and exposing how tightly modern supply chains depend on interconnected digital systems. Across manufacturing and logistics environments, ransomware attacks, credential theft, and supplier vulnerabilities are increasingly translating into operational downtime with direct financial consequences. Recent insights from executives at Arkestro and

The supply chain leadership moves of May reflect something less dramatic than a pivot and more telling than routine: companies reinforcing execution layers, elevating operators over strategists, and in at least one case, responding to unexpected leadership gaps with emergency succession. Across both Core and Orbit, the pattern points toward an industry that is tightening its grip on operations at a moment when geopolitical and freight market pressures leave little room for tr

Procurement teams running tail-spend events continue to face execution breakdowns even as agentic AI platforms promise end-to-end autonomy. Incomplete requirements, mismatched supplier records and loosely scoped events routinely force manual intervention, preventing automated workflows from completing without human correction. Tail spend typically accounts for 10-20 percent of total organizational spend but drives 60-80 percent of procurement transactions. This volume creates

Fashion warehouses are operating under mounting pressure as returns volatility disrupts established execution patterns. Inbound reverse logistics now regularly competes with outbound order fulfillment for the same labor, dock doors and storage capacity, particularly in the weeks and months following major sales campaigns. This shift places new strain on 3PLs that already operate within tight margins and narrow delivery windows. Omnichannel growth, rapid style turnover and fre

Port and distribution yards remain among the highest diesel consumers per operating hour in the supply chain. A single yard spotter on two shifts can burn hundreds of gallons per week, much of it while idling between trailer moves. When fuel prices rise or emission zones tighten, those costs flow directly into landed expenses. Operators are now weighing how fast electric yard trucks can replace diesel units without disrupting tight receiving windows and departure schedules. T

Global manufacturers and retailers are grappling with a deepening crisis in ocean shipping that is undermining supply chain stability and driving up costs across industries. Intensifying geopolitical competition over port control is creating systemic vulnerabilities that directly threaten operational efficiency and profitability. Escalating Costs and Volatility Freight rates swing unpredictably as vessels reroute around conflict zones, adding 10–14 days to Asia-Europe journey

A trailer pulls into the gate at 7 a.m. after a 30 percent spike in inbound volume triggered by port bunching. The appointment calendar is already obsolete. Dock doors sit blocked. Receivers work from outdated spreadsheets. Pallets wait unverified on the yard. By the time the shift ends, detention charges have climbed, cycle counts are postponed again, and OTIF targets are slipping. The problem is no longer visibility. It is the gap between what the systems promised and what

Warehouses are rapidly becoming one of the most important environments for the deployment of video management systems VMS and AI driven analytics. What was historically a passive layer of CCTV recording for loss prevention is now evolving into an operational intelligence platform that connects cameras, analytics engines and warehouse execution systems. Across logistics networks, distribution centers and fulfillment hubs, cameras are no longer installed simply to document inci

After listening to ten major Q1 2026 earnings calls across shipping, trucking, warehousing, retail, and supply chain software, one pattern became difficult to ignore: the industry is stabilizing operationally long before it is recovering financially. Executives are no longer speaking like companies waiting for demand to suddenly return. Instead, they are talking about margin discipline, tighter execution, automation, contract quality, and resilience. The language itself has c

There is a number in Netstock's 2026 Tariff Impact Report that stops you mid-read: 44%. That is the share of SMBs that spent much of 2025 absorbing tariff costs rather than passing them on, betting that protecting customer relationships was worth the margin hit. For a while, it was a defensible call. Then it stopped being one. Today, 82% of SMBs are passing costs on to customers. Of those, 92% are doing it through direct price increases. Not through quiet reformulations or sm