Ep. 9 - Decision Advantage: Winning in a Volatile Market

Описание: Volatility isn’t a phase to ride out, it’s the operating system of modern logistics. We sit down with Michael Zimmerman, partner at Kearney and veteran of Fortune 500 supply chains, to unpack how structural shocks from trade policy, weather, and geopolitics have rewritten the rules of planning, sourcing, and execution. The throughline is clear: decision advantage beats tool accumulation.

We dig into layered planning that replaces single-point bets with capacity portfolios, flex clauses, and warehouse swing space. Michael shares how to define explicit triggers so teams can reconfigure within days, not weeks, and why the real breakdowns happen at cross-functional seams, order management to load planning, forecasting to capacity commitments. On the people side, we talk about preserving contextual experience, building durable playbooks, and resisting rotations that erase hard-won pattern recognition.

If you’re drowning in tech pitches, this conversation recenters the target: invest where most spend and resilience are decided, transportation sourcing, network design, capacity assurance, and supplier performance. We explore why big-bang transformations often fail and how to layer practical use cases on top of ERP, TMS, and WMS. On AI, Michael is blunt: real wins today live in decision compression, freight audit and pay, spend visibility, exception workflows, and sourcing support, while humans keep the negotiation and relationship work that sets advantage when markets tighten.

Walk away with a playbook to prepay for optionality, fix the seams, and focus your bets where they change outcomes. If you’re aiming to sense, decide, and reconfigure faster, without torching your budget, this is your roadmap to resilient, high-velocity logistics. Enjoy the episode, then subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review to help more leaders find the show.

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Chapters:
0:08 Host Intro And Guest Bio
0:34 Michael’s Career Path And Focus
2:45 Volatility Becomes Structural
5:36 Rethinking Planning For Uncertainty
8:23 People, Process, Tech For Resilience
12:38 Where Firms Fail At Resilience
16:09 Prioritizing Decisions Over Tools
20:31 AI’s Real Use Cases In Logistics
24:04 Building Decision Advantage
28:24 Final Advice For Senior Leaders
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