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AI agents can keep operational work moving overnight. But in supply chains, automating a flawed process can accelerate mistakes just as quickly as it clears backlogs, while leaving accountability dangerously unclear.

I put that challenge to Elon Salfati, CEO of Salfati Group, who works with organisations adopting AI. We examine why promising deployments stumble over cross-team handovers, undocumented expertise and resistance too easily dismissed as fear of change. The consequences? Delayed decisions, repeated work and investments that fail to deliver operational improvements.

Elon describes an operating model where a thousand AI agents work overnight, leaving just four decisions for humans. We explore what that means for management, why experienced employees hold knowledge no system has captured, and how organisations can verify outcomes when agents start acting rather than merely advising.

Listen now to reconsider what your organisation should automate, where human judgement remains essential, and how to prevent faster execution from creating greater operational risk.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

A missed outbound load can begin long before anyone reaches the loading dock. A pallet in the wrong location or a trailer blocked behind others can drain labour, slow throughput and threaten delivery commitments.

I’m joined by Phil Newsome, COO of Lazer Logistics, and Todd Boone, VP North America at Dexory. They bring complementary perspectives from yard operations and warehouse inventory, where incomplete information often hides problems until someone urgently needs the freight.

We examine why 98% inventory accuracy can still leave thousands of errors in a large facility, why six people might become involved in resolving a single discrepancy, and why more labour isn't always the answer to a congested yard. The bigger question: what changes when yard and warehouse teams can anticipate problems rather than chase them?

Listen now to see where operational delays really begin, and which decisions can keep freight moving.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

A supply-chain decision can be perfectly correct, and still be useless if it arrives too late. Better forecasts matter, but the harder problem is turning uncertain, fragmented information into action while that information still has value.

My guest is Benji Price, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Wild Ducks, who has worked with supply-chain planning teams globally. We look at what happens when planners are expected to manage millions of SKU-location combinations, critical knowledge still sits in people’s heads, and understandable local decisions quietly create excess inventory and hidden cost.

We examine why every forecast is wrong to some degree, why the newest AI model is not automatically the best forecasting tool, and where automation should hand decisions back to experienced people. We also get into a harder question: if faster decisions sometimes beat more accurate ones, what should supply-chain leaders actually optimise for?

Listen now to understand how forecasting, automation and human judgement can work together to produce better decisions before the opportunity to act has passed.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

AI can make supply-chain decisions faster. It can also scale the data problems people have been quietly correcting for years. Once machines start acting rather than merely reporting, inconsistent definitions, missing context and weak governance become operational problems.

I speak with Sagar Paul, Chief Revenue and Growth Officer at The Modern Data Company, who brings nearly three decades across operations, enterprise data, manufacturing and supply chain. We look at what changes when AI in supply chain moves from helping humans interpret information to making decisions itself — and why that raises the stakes for procurement, manufacturing and operations.

We examine why “better data” depends on the decision being made, how tribal knowledge has been masking semantic inconsistencies, and why real-time data can become expensive noise rather than useful signal. We also challenge a dangerous assumption: that automating an existing process automatically improves it. Sometimes it simply automates the leakage.

Listen now to understand what your data needs to prove before you let machines act on it.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

A production line can go down because two people are passing an Excel file back and forth with no audit trail. That is the uncomfortable reality behind this episode: some of the biggest supply-chain risks sit inside ordinary workarounds that nobody questions because, until they fail, they appear to work.

My guest is Patrick Van Hull, now an Agentic Operations Consultant at Salesforce and, when we recorded this conversation, an Industry Consultant at Tungsten Automation. Drawing on experience across companies including Dell, Rio Tinto, Apple and CVS Health, Patrick has seen how document flows, manual hand-offs and disconnected processes can create delays, downtime and business interruption far beyond the back office.

We examine why automating a broken process can simply make the inefficiency faster, why a single inbound supply chain can involve more than 30 documents, and what frontline teams know that formal process maps often miss. We also challenge the assumption that an AI strategy should come before clarity about the work itself — and ask where human judgement still matters most.

Listen now to understand where hidden workflow risk enters your supply chain — and what to fix before you automate it.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

A 98% response rate sounds excellent—until the missing 2% includes police and ambulance calls. That is the problem with judging automation by averages when the exceptions carry the greatest operational risk.

My guest is Josh Gould, CEO of The Big Word, whose teams operate at the intersection of AI, human judgement and mission-critical language services. His experience exposes a wider business issue: automation can cut cost and increase capacity, but poor escalation design can create service, legal and continuity failures.

We examine why AI works best on repeatable volume, what changes when speed and accuracy start pulling in opposite directions, and why the handoff to a human matters more than many leaders assume. We also get into the economics: where automation genuinely lowers operating cost, where technology spend gets wasted, and why adoption may move more slowly than the current AI narrative suggests.

Listen now to understand where AI should run autonomously—and where resilient operations still need a human ready to take over.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

Cutting labour when demand dips can look like smart cost control. But if workers respond by finding more reliable work elsewhere, today’s saving can become tomorrow’s churn, hiring cost and capacity problem.

My guest is James Terry of Indeed Flex, who has spent more than 15 years in staffing and workforce management. We look at what happens when labour planning is treated as an HR exercise rather than an operating decision, and why that can affect fulfilment, throughput, customer service and the bottom line.

We unpack the trade-off between cost, quality and speed, challenge the assumption that workforce consistency requires the same people on every shift, and examine why HR and operations can make contradictory decisions when their data sits in separate systems. We also look at where AI can help connect those signals — and where technology alone cannot fix poor workforce design.

Listen now to understand how better labour planning can reduce expensive firefighting and improve the decisions that keep supply-chain operations moving.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

More supply-chain data does not automatically produce better decisions. Digital systems can expose risk, but they can also reproduce the same governance failures, blind spots and weak assumptions already embedded in the operation.

My guests today are Lara Schilling, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Technical University of Denmark, and Professor Stefan Seuring, a long-time researcher in sustainable supply chains. Their latest paper used 52 conversations from this podcast as its dataset, examining how technologies including AI, IoT and blockchain connect with supply-chain sustainability and risk.

We look at why visibility is only the beginning, why failure stories are so hard to find, and why even academic research can become skewed towards positive outcomes. We also examine what leaders may be missing when indicators look reassuring, what happens when digital investments are judged at implementation rather than over time, and why the question “visibility to whom?” matters more than it first appears.

Listen now to understand what separates useful supply-chain visibility from expensive digital capability that fails to improve decisions.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

AI can cut routine supply chain work and reduce payroll costs. But eliminating entry-level roles could leave your business short of experienced leaders when the next disruption demands judgement.

I’m joined by Friddy Hoegener, owner of Scope Recruiting and a former supply chain professional. His experience in procurement and recruitment exposes a gap between filling today’s vacancies and developing the people who will make tomorrow’s decisions.

Why do hiring processes stall even when a suitable candidate is available? We challenge the demand for an exact industry match and consider whether procurement teams could use the time freed by AI to qualify alternative suppliers before disruption.

Listen now to rethink which supply chain roles you automate, which skills you hire for, and how you develop the people your business will need next.

Also, check out Friday's podcast Procurement Pulse

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

Warehouse automation can increase throughput while quietly creating a new failure point: maintenance that has not kept pace. When critical assets fail, the consequence is not an engineering inconvenience. It is downtime, lost service and interrupted revenue.

My guest is Asim Akram, CEO of MultiSensor AI. We look at what happens when conveyors, motors, chillers and electrical systems become more digitised while inspection and maintenance remain periodic and manual — a mismatch that matters directly to supply chain resilience and business continuity. 

We examine why degradation happens gradually while failure can arrive in one shot, why more automation can increase operational dependency, and why AI-based detection still achieves nothing if teams do not trust the signal enough to act. We also challenge the idea that maintenance is simply a cost centre rather than part of protecting throughput, service and the top line.

Listen now to understand where hidden warehouse risk is moving,  and what separates proactive operations from expensive firefighting.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.

Send me a message

If you’re buying 120% of the food required to serve 100% of your customers, you don’t have a waste problem. You have a forecasting, procurement and margin problem.

My guest is Olaf van der Veen, co-founder of Orbisk, working with commercial kitchens to track where food is being lost. His point is blunt: much of that loss happens before anything reaches a plate, through overproduction, overstocking and weak operating procedures. In a low-margin business, that is excess inventory turning directly into lost profit.

We examine why food waste is often misdiagnosed as bad behaviour, what changes when kitchens can finally see where losses occur, and why AI forecasts perform better when combined with experienced human judgement. We also look at a hotel that cut one chef to save cost, only to discover the extra waste was expensive enough to pay for two and a half.

Listen now to understand where poor planning is quietly eating margin, and what better demand, procurement and operational data can reveal.

 If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.

Support the show

Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:

• Alicia Farag
• Kieran Ognev
• Gary Lynch

And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber  - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.

🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability?
I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making. 

Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. 

Thanks for listening.