Only 42% Can See Past the First Supplier. The Container Is Already Tracked
Basic visibility is largely solved. A shipper can see the vessel, the flight or the container. Execution still stalls one layer down, where that event has to be tied to the bill-of-materials component that will stock out, or to a third-tier supplier that is a forced-labor risk. Most supply chains cannot make that link. McKinsey's 2025 supply chain risk survey found that 95% of respondents had visibility into at least tier-one supplier risks, while only 42% had visibility into tier two or beyond. Of the 58% that had mapped tier-two suppliers, fewer than half kept regular direct contact with them.
The Missing Link Is Not the Event
Brian Glick, founder and chief executive of Chain.io, said in written comments to The Supply Chainer that connecting those signals to the component that will cause a stock-out downstream, or seeing a third-tier supplier who is a forced-labor risk, is out of reach for most supply chains. "That's the missing link for execution." Chain.io moves data between shippers, forwarders, carriers and warehouses. Glick's point is that the pipe is no longer the break. The break is what the event means for a part that is not on the milestone.
The same limit is already on the record. In The Supply Chainer's piece on why visibility is not enough in WMS and TMS, Bruce Shields of ABS Tag & Title said: "Companies have invested significant capital in technology over the last several years, only to find that visibility does not fix execution challenges."
The Real Rule Is Not in the SOP
What fails when each party has the same data is the rule. Glick said humans usually sort that out on the ground. "The SOP says never ship anything but a full container, but the person working the account knows that really means 80% full, and that you never miss the ship window on Christmas products because someone got in trouble five years ago. None of that is written down." Much of it is also hidden from shippers by 3PLs, 4PLs and in-country teams. The partners can exchange the status. They are not exchanging the exception the account manager will actually make. The work that closes the gap is manual, and it cannot be done systemically from the file the shipper sees.
An Agent That Sees Only the File Will Get It Wrong
Before AI can manage an order, Glick said, it needs the context that is not a field. "How do you know that one dress headed to the Oscars matters more to a fashion house than 50 containers of t-shirts? No field in the data says so. A human knows from emails, calls, and decades of experience." An agent needs that same context, including recordings, financials and marketing plans, and today most of it is not shared. Until it is, an agent that only sees the data will follow the SOP to the letter and get it wrong. Modernization also has to continue at every level so agents can act rather than just flag. He called it a slow march.
The same connectivity limit showed up on the warehouse side. In The Supply Chainer's coverage of the CEVA breach, Ilan Barda, chief executive of Radiflow, said in written responses: "The mixed IT/OT network enables lateral movement of the attacker from the IT network to the critical OT network. These facilities rely on extensive use of wireless networks providing an easy entry point for the attacker. On top of these three basic security controls it is recommended to conduct a security posture assessment of the site to map additional specific gaps and proposed mitigations."
A connected milestone does not carry the unwritten rule. The Christmas window and the Oscars dress are the same failure: the system has the shipment, and the priority lives in a call the 3PL did not pass on. A file that moves between partners, and a network that mixes the office and the floor, fail at the same point. The event is visible. The rule that should act on it is not in the system. Until that context is in the file, an agent will ship the full container and miss the one order the account was never allowed to miss.
