From Hormuz to the Control Tower: Where Supply Chains Actually Break

The problem isn’t the disruption

Pressure on the Strait of Hormuz is once again forcing supply chain teams to confront a familiar reality. The disruption itself is rarely the point of failure. What breaks is everything that happens after.

Rerouting decisions, carrier availability checks, cost trade-offs - these don’t fail because the data is missing. They fail because the organization can’t align fast enough.

In earlier coverage, several executives pointed to the same pattern from different angles. Dominik Metzger, VP Global Head of SAP Digital Supply Chain, focused on the immediate impact: longer lead times and rising costs as rerouting becomes unavoidable. Nari Viswanathan, Senior Director of Supply Chain Strategy at Coupa, emphasized the need for pre-built optionality and scenario planning. Judah Levine, Head of Research at Freightos, described how carrier behavior quickly translates into congestion and pricing pressure. Tom Raftery, futurist and former SAP Global VP, took it further, framing chokepoints like Hormuz as a structural weakness in how global trade is organized.

The 72-hour gap

In response to a media query from The Supply Chainer, Nitin Jayakrishnan, CEO and co-founder of Freehand, put a sharper point on it: “Most companies don't lose when a corridor goes down, they lose in the 72 hours after while someone is still building the spreadsheet.”

“A large food manufacturer we work with had ocean capacity pulled on a key trans-Pacific lane mid-quarter. The corridor problem was solved in hours, but the internal decision took three days: which lanes to shift, which carriers had contract availability, and what the landed cost delta was across modes. By then, spot air had moved. The data existed, it just lived in three systems that didn't talk to each other.”

“AI can’t change the disruption, but it can change the lag between disruption and decision. When rate logic, carrier contracts, and mode trade-offs are held in a single context layer, rebalancing looks less like a war room and more like a routing confirmation.”

He added: “The honest answer isn't speed, it's cognitive triage. Logistics teams are good at solving hard problems. The issue is that most of their day is spent on problems that aren't hard, they're just numerous.”

Christoph “CJ” Schettler, Supply Chain Lead, North America at Celonis

What’s actually happening inside the operation

Responding to questions from The Supply Chainer, Christoph “CJ” Schettler, Supply Chain Lead, North America at Celonis, described a different but related issue - not decision-making, but understanding what is actually happening inside the process.

“Process intelligence platforms provide a system-agnostic, end-to-end understanding of the physics of an enterprise,” he said. “They surface invisible loops and manual reworks in real time… allowing companies to pinpoint the actual root causes of disruptions rather than just treating the symptoms.”

He pointed to a more practical shift: “The core advantage is shifting from ‘planning’ to ‘doing’. Many traditional planning systems suffer from ‘reaction delay’. Process intelligence enables companies to resolve disruptions… at the moment of impact.”

What operators already know

A senior logistics executive at a global manufacturer, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the issue more bluntly: “We don’t have a visibility problem. We have a coordination problem. Everyone sees the issue at the same time, but no one moves at the same time.” That gap - between signal and synchronized action - is where most of the cost now sits. Hormuz may be the trigger, but it’s not the story. The story is how long it takes an organization to decide what to do next.