Supply Chain Management Review Podcast

On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Mantej Singh Randhawa, senior vice president of supply chain at Genpact , about the operational weaknesses that can limit returns on artificial intelligence investments. Their conversation explores enterprise debt: the accumulated problems in data, processes, technology and talent that make new capabilities harder to implemen...

On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Archita Prasad, president of UPS Capital, and Ashley Hillman, vice president of product at UPS Capital , about connecting fraud prevention, shipping protection and claims management across the customer journey. Their conversation explores why payment approval doesn’t eliminate an order’s risk, how AI can help identify pattern...

On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Jonathan Brooks, CEO and founder of Warehouse on Wheels , about the company’s WOW Supply Chain Activity Index. Their conversation explores how trailer deployment activity can complement established indicators, why a headline number needs context, and how leaders can use market signals when evaluating capacity commitments.

Supply chain organizations have become better at seeing disruptions. Dashboards, control towers and connected equipment can alert teams when something goes wrong. The harder task is determining why it happened, choosing a response and confirming that the response worked. On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Michael Becher, vice president of digitalization and AI...

Worker wellbeing is often treated as a compliance or ESG responsibility. Carmel Giblin, president and CEO of the Ethical Supply Chain Program, argues that it should instead be viewed as an operational capability. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Giblin explains why audits alone cannot provide continuous visibility, how trusted grievance mechanisms reveal risks workers may not disclose duri...

Over the past two decades, supply chain has moved from a largely behind-the-scenes operational function focused on cost and efficiency to a strategic enterprise capability that touches everything from growth and customer experience to geopolitics, sustainability and national security. Few people have had a better vantage point on that transformation than Abe Eshkenazi, CEO of the Association for S...

Supply chain disruptions are no longer exceptional events. They are part of the everyday operating environment—and that means the way companies manage risk has to change with them. On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with David Weeks , director and supply chain industry practice lead at Moody’s , about how supply chain risk has evolved and why many of the approaches...

Procurement organizations have invested heavily in artificial intelligence, automation and digital transformation, but technology may be exposing a problem that has been hiding underneath those investments: The processes themselves aren’t always ready for AI. On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Ryan Polk, chief of research for procurement at Gartner , about fin...

Supply chain leaders have invested billions in visibility platforms, automation and AI. Yet many organizations continue to struggle with execution, revenue leakage and increasingly complex operations. On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Brian Straight speaks with Mahesh Rajasekharan, president and CEO of Cleo, about the findings from the company’s 2026 Global Supply Chain Executive Report and...

The rapid growth of the secondhand economy is forcing logistics providers to rethink how supply chains are designed. While traditional transportation networks have been optimized for speed, efficiency and automation, oversized, one-of-a-kind products require a different approach—one centered on care, transparency and customer expectations. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Brian Straight sp...

Six months after first discussing the possibility of a U.S. manufacturing renaissance, Talking Supply Chain host Brian Straight welcomes Brian Higgins, U.S. sector leader for industrial manufacturing at KPMG , back to the Talking Supply Chain podcast to assess what has changed. While investment in domestic manufacturing continues to grow, Higgins argues that the real challenge has shifted from ann...

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is welcome news for global supply chains, but according to Eric Fullerton, vice president of data insights at project44 , the industry’s focus should not be on returning to normal. Instead, supply chain leaders should be asking what they learned from the disruption and how they can build more resilient operations before the next crisis arrives. In a recent epi...

For decades, supply chains were managed as a series of interconnected but largely independent functions. Planning, sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, and fulfillment each operated with their own objectives, metrics, and decision-making processes. But according to Graeme Carter, chief global supply chain officer at Coty , that model is no longer sufficient in a world defined by volatility, geopoli...

Artificial intelligence has dominated supply chain conversations for years, but many organizations are still trying to determine where AI is delivering measurable operational value versus where it remains stuck in experimentation mode. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Petra Schindler-Carter, head of retail and consumer packaged goods at Amazon Web Services , joins host Brian Straight to di...

Supply chain disruption is no longer episodic. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Bob Daymon, head of client services for Uber Freight, joins host Brian Straight to break down how logistics organizations are adapting to an environment defined by tariff uncertainty, tightening capacity, and compressed planning cycles. The conversation centers on a fundamental shift: companies that win today a...

Artificial intelligence is widely expected to accelerate global trade, improve decision-making, and unlock new efficiencies across supply chains. But beneath that promise lies a reality few are grasping, and it is one that might result in more market barriers than anticipated. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight is joined Dravida Seetharam, a fellow at the Center for Globa...

Procurement has long been viewed as a tactical function focused on cost savings and compliance, but Sam Jenks believes that mindset is outdated. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, the Kodiak Hub CRO and host of the Way We Source podcast, makes the case for treating supplier relationship management (SRM) as procurement’s equivalent of CRM in sales. Jenks explains why many procurement teams ar...

Cargo theft in the United States has entered a new phase, shifting from localized truck stop thefts to sophisticated schemes orchestrated by international crime networks, according to Scott Cornell, vice president of transportation risk and strategy at LogistIQ Insurance Solutions and chair of TAPA Americas. In a recent episode of Talking Supply Chain, Cornell explained that cargo theft incidents...

In the latest episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight sat down with Dave Pennino, CEO of LogicSource , to explore why procurement is no longer just a cost-control function, it’s becoming a strategic lever for financial resilience. Pennino doesn’t mince words about what’s changed. In an era of tariff uncertainty, inflation, geopolitical instability and shifting consumer demand, CFOs ar...

Artificial intelligence is often pitched to procurement teams as a straightforward productivity win—save time, automate work, and move faster. But in this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight digs into why those promised time savings don’t always translate into better decisions or cleaner execution. Joined by Erin McFarland, VP of Operations at Fairmarkit , the conversation quickly...

Cybersecurity has become one of the most material, and least understood, risks facing modern supply chains. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight sits down with Tim Freestone, chief strategy officer at Kiteworks , to unpack why AI-driven automation, agentic workflows, and digital collaboration tools are rapidly expanding the supply chain attack surface well beyond traditiona...

Pallet building is one of the most common activities in distribution centers, yet it remains largely untouched by modern optimization efforts. In this episode, Talking Supply Chain host Brian Straight speaks with Kyle Franklin, senior solutions consultant for Lucas Systems about why palletization has historically been treated as a manual, experience-driven task rather than a strategic lever for ef...

As supply chain leaders confront rising labor costs, workforce shortages, and global uncertainty, automation is increasingly seen as both an opportunity and a risk. In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Jeff Bornino, president of North America at TMX Transform , and Nick De Klerk, senior director, about why automation decisions must start with feasibility, not en...

In this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Brian Straight speaks with Brian Higgins, partner, U.S. sector leader for Industrial Manufacturing in KPMG’s U.S. supply chain and operations practice, about whether the recent surge in U.S. manufacturing investment represents a true renaissance or a fragile moment shaped by tariffs and geopolitics. Higgins notes that while headlines may exaggerate some ann...

For years, product returns have been dismissed as an unavoidable cost of doing business—an operational burden buried deep in the supply chain. But as e-commerce growth stabilizes and margins tighten, that blind spot is becoming too expensive to ignore. Returns represent not only a massive financial drag but also a powerful, underutilized source of intelligence that can transform forecasting, inven...