SupplyChainTalk: Rewriting the rules - how agile supply chains are winning in an age of disruption 

On 16 July 2025, SupplyChainTalk host Ana Maria Velica was joined by Brian Bourke, Chief Commercial Officer, SEKO Logistics; Patrick Strauss, CEO, TomorrowsLeaders.Today; and Alexis Rotenberg, Global Vice President, Industry Practices, Kinaxis. 

 

Views on news 

DHL Supply Chain has announced an investment of £550m (€637m) to expand its infrastructure and accelerate the rollout of automation across its customer operations in UK and Ireland, to support growing demand in the e-commerce and life sciences health care sectors. Robots in warehouses make work safer and allow 3PL to grow faster.

 

Other companies such as SEKO also trial their robots in their UK facilities. In a warehouse environment, robots genuinely free the human workforce from repetitive, low-value tasks such as container loading. DHL’s project and other similar ones are not only about deploying robots and reinventing work but also about how companies can better serve their customers.  

 

The importance of supply chain orchestration 

In freight forwarding, there is still a lot of human intervention. Up until the end of 2010s, the focus had been on TMS, WMS and track and trace, while now we are living in an age of hyper acceleration. Given that there are about 17 touchpoints while a freight gets from the US to China, automating and orchestrating these processes can enhance efficiency to a high degree. Businesses often deploy digital twins but for the wrong reasons, focussing on a single process or a business unit without capturing the real value that AI can bring or focussing on orchestration.  

 

Amazon sets an example by how they use ML to cut forecast errors and leveraging AI to learn about their customers as much a they can. Another example is Zara, who have mastered using AI to spot new trends very quickly, which they harness to have 3 week turnarounds rather than 3 month ones.  Kinaxis has a more integrated approach to orchestration when it is applied to both planning and execution with the help of AI. Rather than focussing on supply, these new approaches are demand-driven, and they talk about demand rather than supply chains.  

 

To make the supply chain ecosystem work, you need to build trust through data visibility and data sharing. There are some great tools that make sharing information easier and secure between ecosystem partners. Collaboration platforms must be designed to send automated alerts to stakeholders when there is an issue. In logistics, where things happen fast, you need a lot of computing power to be able to understand the consequences of an alert in near real time and build a response to this alert together with your partners.  

 

What’s referred to as a constantly evolving trading policy in the US is a cause for concern for any company doing business in the US. For businesses, however, who can get a sweetheart deal or have a more resilient supply chain, this can also be turned into a competitive advantage.  

 

The panel’s advice 

• A lot of companies are still struggling getting their heads around what AI really means to them and how they could utilise it.  
• Change must come from the very top down and communicated clearly to the entire organisation.  
• Have a vision but start small.  
• The better understanding you have of your data, the more likely you are to make accurate decisions in real time.  
• Trust comes from sharing data and collaborative response to the issues that data reveals.  
• Gather your team. Pick one disruption that you’ve recently faced and think of how you could have better solved this problem with real-time visibility, AI orchestration and ecosystem alignment, and use findings as a blueprint.