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 at Körber Supply Chain, about closing that gap in warehouse operations. Their conversation covers equipment downtime, predictive maintenance, root cause analysis, AI agents and the safeguards needed before systems take action on their own.

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 during an audit, and why more reports do not necessarily indicate a worse supplier. She also discusses measurable returns from worker-wellbeing programs, the role AI can play in identifying patterns and why human interaction remains essential when workers are vulnerable.

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 Supply Chain Management (ASCM). On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, host Brian Straight speaks with Eshkenazi about how the profession has changed during his tenure, why COVID represented a turning point for supply chain, the rise of the chief supply chain officer, AI and the continuing importance of people, and the challenges the industry still has not solved.