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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.

Send me a message

Heavy equipment electrification has a hidden problem: the machinery itself can waste most of the energy you put into it. That means bigger batteries, higher capital costs and a weaker business case before the machine has even started work.

My guest is Hiten Sonpal, CEO of Rise Robotics, who is working on replacing conventional hydraulics with belt-driven actuation. We get into why hydraulic systems can be roughly 25% efficient, how that inefficiency drives battery and charging requirements, and why downtime and maintenance failures may matter even more than the emissions case.

We examine why better batteries are not always the answer, what changes when heavy machinery becomes drive-by-wire, and why industrial AI and autonomy depend on something far less glamorous: machines that can actually generate useful operational data. We also look at prognostics, digital twins, teleoperation and the prospect of one operator supervising several machines rather than controlling just one.

Listen now to understand what is really constraining heavy-equipment electrification — and where better engineering can cut cost, downtime and operational friction.

 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

Supply chains have more operational data than ever, yet warehouses still miss carrier cut-offs, misallocate labour and react too slowly when conditions change. The problem is often not seeing what is happening. It is turning that signal into the right action quickly enough to protect cost and service.

I’m joined by Scott DeGroot, Executive Director of the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee, and Keith La Londe, VP of Systems at PathGuide Technologies. Between them, they bring the enterprise and warehouse-floor perspectives on why ERP, WMS, labour, transport and automation so often operate on different clocks - and what that disconnect costs.

We examine why “dashboard theatre” can leave leaders informed but ineffective, why near-real-time data may be more useful than chasing perfect real-time awareness, and what happens when expensive warehouse automation collides with physical reality. We also challenge the metrics leaders trust, the temptation to wait for certainty, and the assumption that more data automatically means better decisions.

Listen now to understand what is really slowing supply-chain execution - and what separates useful visibility from expensive firefighting.

Could your supply chain take the hit? Download my free 15-minute resilience scorecard to uncover hidden vulnerabilities, calculate your score and turn the results into a practical 30-day action plan: tomraftery.com/scorecard

 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 models are getting smarter at an astonishing pace. But if they can't reliably sense what's happening across your supply chain, they'll still make poor decisions. The real bottleneck may not be intelligence at all, it may be the quality of the physical data feeding it.

I'm joined by Doron Hazan, who leads AI at Wiliot, to explore why the next step in AI for supply chain isn't another model or agent, but a stronger data foundation connecting products, pallets and warehouses to real-time decision-making. We discuss why incomplete physical data creates misleading dashboards, slows operational decisions and increases the risks of automating the wrong actions.

We examine why AI in supply chain is fundamentally different from AI in the digital world, why many organisations are investing in AI before fixing the data beneath it, and what changes when individual items become continuous sources of operational data. We also explore where human judgement remains essential, how continuous sensing supports faster decisions at scale, and why better models alone won't solve supply-chain execution.

Listen now to understand what is really limiting AI in supply chain, and why the organisations that invest first in their data foundation will be better placed to make faster, more reliable operational 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.