Leveraged Supply Chains

Your SIOP process looks airtight on paper. The S&OP meetings are running. The demand signals are flowing. And your ERP is telling you exactly what you planned to order six weeks ago. What it's not telling you is whether your supplier confirmed it, when they actually plan to ship it, or whether that lead time you're planning against was last validated before inflation hit. In this episode of Le...

Your inbox is full of AI pitches, but your team is still living in email, spreadsheets, and an ERP that hasn't changed how work gets done. So what happens when the old SaaS playbook actually breaks? In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains, Andrew Stroup sits down with Dr. Elouise Epstein, Partner at Kearney, author, and one of the sharpest critics of procurement technology. Elouise built th...

Most procurement teams don’t lose time in big, strategic decisions — they lose it in the messy middle: PO acknowledgements, promise dates, pricing mismatches, follow-ups, and exceptions that turn the inbox into the real system of record. In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains , Andrew Stroup sits down with Steve Andrews , a supply chain and procurement leader with deep experience across strate...

If you’re a mid-market manufacturer or distributor, your inbox is full of “AI for logistics” and freight-tech pitches — but your team is still living in email threads, spreadsheets, PDFs, and clunky portals. This episode is about closing that gap between the slide deck and what actually works on the ground. Andrew Stroup sits down with Eric Johnson, Senior Technology Editor at the Journal of Comme...

Most teams still manage risk one supplier at a time. They only see tier-1, they fight fires in email, and they call it “resilience” when they update a slide once a year. In this episode, we zoom out to the network level and ask: how can AI actually give us X-ray vision across the whole supplier base? Andrew Stroup sits down with Professor Rob Handfield, Bank of America University Distinguished Pro...

In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains, Andrew Stroup sits down with Charles “Charley” Dehoney, Co-Founder & CEO of Upwell, to demystify freight brokerage AR and show how operators pull exception rates below 3% and drive disputes down—without piling on back-office burden. Definitions (freight brokerage AR): exception rate = % of invoices rejected at submission by the payer’s AP (portal/EDI...

In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains, host Andrew Stroup sits down with Corey Apirian, Founder & CEO of Davinci Micro Fulfillment, to unpack the operating math behind profitable speed—when micro-nodes beat traditional DC/3PL shipping, and when multi-channel fulfillment (MCF) is the better call. We get into the weight/price rule of thumb (>4 lb or >$40 often pencils out; <1 lb or...

In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains , host Andrew Stroup sits down with Dustin Rutledge, Supplier Quality Engineer at Major Tool & Machine (part of Precinmac), to unpack how a high-mix, large-format manufacturer modernized procurement and supplier quality without adding friction for suppliers. Dustin shares how the team moved from reactive email + ERP data entry to automated acknowledgm...

In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains , host Andrew Stroup sits down with Melanie Baker, Director of Supply Chain at PSS Industrial Group, to unpack how AI is transforming procurement in the energy and industrial supply sector. Melanie shares how her team moved from “chasing their tails” with constant price and lead-time changes to building a resilient, automated workflow that protects margin...

In this episode of Leveraged Supply Chains , host Andrew Stroup sits down with Josh Cox, Vice President of Purchasing at General Factory Supply, to explore how AI is reshaping procurement and supplier management in manufacturing. Josh shares how his team moved away from manual, outdated systems and adopted Leverage AI, a procurement automation platform that streamlines purchase orders, improves su...