Resilient Supply Chain Podcast: Why Logistics Visibility Is Becoming a Resilience Issue

In the latest episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast, host Tom Raftery speaks with Constantine Komodromos, Founder and CEO of VesselBot, about a problem hiding in plain sight across global operations: most companies still lack a single, real-time view of their logistics performance. The discussion centres on transport data, emissions visibility, and the growing gap between what organisations think they know and what is actually happening across cost, service, and execution. For supply chain leaders, that gap has become more than a reporting problem. It now affects resilience, governance, and the quality of day-to-day operational decisions. The full episode is available at www.resilientsupplychainpodcast.com

Fragmented Data, Weaker Decisions

The central tension in the conversation is straightforward: logistics decisions are increasingly being made in volatile conditions, but the underlying data is often historical, aggregated, and fragmented across systems. Komodromos argues that this leaves organisations relying on averages when they need execution-level insight. As he puts it, “Not many companies… have one consolidated view of all their logistics operations.”

That matters because transport performance is no longer a narrow logistics concern. Carrier reliability, emissions, cost-to-serve, and service levels are becoming interdependent variables in an environment shaped by disruption, tariff shifts, and geopolitical instability. In that context, poor data integrity is not simply an IT issue. It is a decision-quality issue.

Why Averages No Longer Hold

A second theme is the declining usefulness of industry averages. Historical emissions factors and simplified transport assumptions may once have been adequate for reporting, but they break down under changing operating conditions. The episode uses maritime transport to illustrate the point. Rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, for example, did not simply add miles. It also altered vessel speeds, utilisation rates, and fuel consumption patterns, all of which changed emissions outcomes in ways older datasets would not capture.

Resilient Supply Chain Podcast: Tom Raftery & Constantine Komodromos, Founder and CEO of VesselBot

The wider implication is that resilience depends on recognising operational variability, not masking it. Maintenance condition, vessel age, weather, port congestion, and carrier choices all affect performance. When those factors are flattened into averages, companies lose the ability to distinguish between apparent efficiency and real efficiency.

Emissions as an Operating Signal

One of the more notable insights is that transport emissions data can reveal broader management failures. Komodromos describes a case where high emissions intensity on a lane was traced to low truck utilisation and an outdated contract that no longer matched trading patterns. Once the company identified the problem, utilisation improved, while both cost and emissions fell.

That example shifts the role of sustainability data. Rather than sitting at the end of a reporting chain, emissions become an operational signal that can expose waste, underused assets, and stale commercial assumptions. The discussion suggests that this is where accountability becomes more tangible: not in declarations, but in how data is used to test whether procurement, logistics, and sustainability decisions still reflect operational reality.

Pressure Is Coming From Finance, Not Just Compliance

The episode also challenges the assumption that regulation is the main driver of better transport emissions data. Komodromos is explicit that “Regulatory pressure, not really. investor pressure, more and more.” The shift matters because it changes the internal conversation. Better data is not only about satisfying external requirements. It is increasingly tied to financing terms, board scrutiny, and the cost implications of carbon-linked policies such as the EU ETS.

The broader message is that transport emissions are moving closer to mainstream operating and finance decisions. That makes governance more demanding. It also raises the bar for data quality.

For senior supply chain and operations leaders, the takeaway is practical rather than abstract. Resilience increasingly depends on whether organisations can see cost, service, and emissions together, rather than through disconnected systems and lagging averages. As disruption persists and scrutiny rises, stronger logistics visibility is becoming less a sustainability initiative than a requirement for sound execution.