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Top Supply Chain Risks to Prepare for in 2025

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Top Supply Chain Risks To Prepare For In 2025

This is the time of year when analysts get bombarded with pitches from PR firms. The pitches share a “sneak peek” of the predictions that a CEO at a solutions company is making and then asks the journalist if they want to interview the CEO. These predictions mostly seem obvious.

I got a pitch from the PR firm representing Everstream Analytics that was different. Everstream Analytics is sitting on a vast trove of risk data. The company applies AI and other analytics to this data to provide supply chain risk analytics and insights to its clients. In short, what makes them different is that they can quantify and thus prioritize supply chain risks.

Their 2025 outlook identifies the five most likely supply chain events that will impact supply chain operations this year. Each event is assigned a risk score.

Drowning in Climate Change

This is the top risk identified by Everstream. They apply a risk score of 90% here. “Flooding has become so volatile that even nations with the most sophisticated weather warning systems and infrastructure are caught off guard by the ferocity and speed of sudden flash flood events. Companies will be upended by even more frequent small-scale events and larger-scale storms like Hurricane Helene’s unexpected and extensive destruction across several states in the U.S. Appalachia region in 2024.”

The company points out that forecasted rainfall totals for Helene were very accurate one week in advance of the flood that devasted the Blue Ridge mountain region of North Carolina. “But nobody in that region had ever experienced or even expected that amount of rainfall in such a brief period. The existing infrastructure (bridges, roads, rails) was built in the past and was insufficient to handle these copious rainfall totals. The damage impacted more than 50 electronics, automotive, and aerospace manufacturers, plus general machinery and materials processors, and medical device and health care companies.”

Climate change is causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events around the world. In 2024, flooding events contributed to 70% of the weather disruptions covered by Everstream Analytics.

So, what can companies do about this risk? They recommend looking at key company-owned facilities and those run by key partners and suppliers. The “evaluation should include a review of area infrastructure, egress routes, and waterways. Pay attention to applied meteorology forecasts as far in advance as possible and take flood warnings particularly seriously. Prepare for the worst and react aggressively.”

Geopolitical Instability with Increased Tariff Risk

Everstream applies a score of 80% to this risk. “International political and economic relations are destabilizing, caused by political upheaval, ongoing skirmishes, and full-scale wars. In 2025, it will be impossible to avoid conflict and its impact on sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics.”

The report cites intensified political turmoil in the Middle East, including the Israeli-Hamas war and its spillover, the Syrian civil war, and continuous Houthi attacks on Red Sea vessels. “Even if the traffic along the Suez Canal route returns to full throttle in 2025, this shift would cause weeklong processing delays, container backlogs, and a spike in congestion at many European seaports due to the sudden increase in cargo volume.”

In Ukraine, Russian forces now occupy around 20% of the country. Additional support from Western allies looks less likely. It is likely Russia will be able to destabilize Ukraine’s remaining manufacturing and trade activities and that further strain between Europe and Russia will result.

In Asia-Pacific, China believes Taiwan rightfully belongs to them. This has led to the souring of cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan as Taiwan exhibits more political independence. “A full-scale invasion seems unlikely.” This may be overly optimistic. However, the report summarizes the military drills around Taiwan in recent years and comments that “more or bigger Chinese military exercises could disrupt transportation through significant seaports and airports in the region. Nearly a third of all global trade – and 40% of all globally traded petroleum products – flows through sea lanes in the region.

Meanwhile, tariff increases always affect global trade flows. President Trump has proposed tariff increases, including a global baseline tariff of 10–20%, a 60% tariff on Chinese imports, and a 100% tariff on goods from de-dollarizing countries. De-dollarization is an effort by several countries to reduce the role of the U.S. dollar in international trade. Countries like Russia, India, China, among others, are seeking to set up trade channels using currencies other than the dollar.

Everstream’s report did not mention Mexican or Canadian tariffs. An increase in the flows between China and Mexico of assembled products, and materials and components produced in China has occurred. This has been described as a “back door” into the U.S. to avoid Trump and Biden administration tariffs. Trump’s negotiations with Mexico to close the back door could heighten the impact of new tariffs on China.

The automotive, semiconductor, and manufacturing industries are at risk due to potential tariffs on solar wafers, polysilicon, steel/aluminum imports, and the closure of the back door to Mexico. Additionally, tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to retaliatory measures, affecting U.S. companies operating in China. This would primarily affect U.S. agricultural exports and finished goods.

The key strategy, according to Everstream, is to understand the multi-tier supply sources by country so that a company can make sourcing adjustments when an event occurs. If a company can do this more quickly than its competitors, that leads to a competitive advantage.

More Back Doors for Cybercrime

Everstream assigns this risk a score of 75%. “While a company’s cybersecurity front doors may be double-bolted, but there are more unlocked back doors than ever available to increasingly sophisticated attackers. In 2025, cyberattacks will primarily arrive via sub-tier supply chains, where criminals can more easily exploit common programming errors and vulnerabilities. They can then leapfrog into top-tier corporations via phishing, software connection links, or other methods.”

Cencora, a sub-tier pharmaceutical supplier, had a security breach in the early spring of 2024. At least 11 global pharmaceutical companies linked this breach to their later ransomware and phishing attacks. Everstream’s data document 471 attacks in 2024. The data shows that cyberattacks were particularly common in the electronics, logistics, and consumer goods industries.

Larry O’Brien, a vice president at ARC Advisory Group, says that an European Union regulation known as Network and Information Systems Directive 2 provides a good framework for companies to follow to bolster their supply chain cybersecurity capabilities. While NIS 2 is an EU regulatory framework, NIS 2 applies to companies headquartered outside the EU if they provide services within the EU. “Adopting a risk management framework for cybersecurity is something that all manufacturers should be doing,” Mr. O’Brien points out. “As with any regulatory framework, NIS 2 tells you what needs to be done, not always how to do it.”

Rare Metals and Minerals on Lockdown

The score assigned to this class of risks is 65%. “Countries and companies alike are recognizing global mineral scarcity coupled with increasing demand, and both are responding by locking up supplies.” Between rising regulations, new tariffs, and long-term or exclusive contracts, rare minerals and metals will be harder and more expensive to obtain.

“Within a politically charged atmosphere between the West and the major commodity producers—China and Russia—companies will face new tariffs and sanctions on critical metals. Governments are placing renewed emphasis on the negative environmental and social impacts of mining, which will present challenges for metal producers over the coming year.”

But, China is not the only nation with proposed or enacted commodity restrictions. “Political tensions over the Russia-Ukraine war led to restrictions on Russian metal imports by the U.S. and the UK. Additionally, security concerns and allegations of industry product dumping led many countries to enact measures against Chinese metal imports.”

As concerns mount surrounding critical commodities, companies are increasingly turning to direct mineral purchasing agreements with mines. However, when a nation supplies an overwhelming majority of a mineral based on mining or processing, direct agreements with mines may have limited value. Graphite, for example, is a core raw material for producing Lithium batteries which are core to the electronic vehicle market. 80% of the world’s graphite is produced in China.

Crackdown on Forced Labor

No nation’s enforcement of any ESG issue comes close to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency’s enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act. $3.7 billion in shipments have been detained at the border based on enforcement of this act. In some cases, the shipments are eventually cleared, but only after supply chains were disrupted and demurrage charges accrued. But a significant proportion of shipments were never allowed entry into the US.

What gives the US act teeth is that “the ‘rebuttable presumption’ part of UFLPA is truly unique. Anything coming out of Xinjiang is presumed to have used forced labor unless an importer can prove the negative. There is also a lack of a de minimis exception; this means that even an insignificant input of product produced in whole or in part with forced labor could result in enforcement action.

While the UFLPA is the most stringent, other nations and regions have also enacted legislation. These include the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D) and regulation on Prohibiting Products made with Forced Labor (FLR); Mexico’s Forced Labor Regulation; and Canada’s Fighting Against Forced and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act.

While legislation has pushed many companies to find alternative suppliers in other low-income countries, many emerging economies do not have adequate laws or enforcement mechanisms. This is particularly true when sub-tier suppliers employ migrant labor.

The technology exists to detect whether a company’s supply chain includes sub-tier suppliers based in the Uighur region of China. This technology is not flawless, there can be false positives and misses. Nevertheless, it is a powerful tool to prevent shipments from being detained based on UFLPA.

However, finding bad actors among sub-tier suppliers in other parts of the world is still difficult. Everstream points out that the food industry is a particular source of concern. Vanilla, palm oil, cocoa, and soy – produced in Madagascar, Indonesia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria – have frequently accrued violations and allegations based on child labor or forced labor issues.

The post Top Supply Chain Risks to Prepare for in 2025 appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

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Shipsy Connects Transportation Orchestration With Exception Response

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Transportation management is expanding beyond planning loads and tendering freight. Modern platforms are increasingly expected to coordinate carriers, track execution, optimize routes, manage exceptions, communicate with stakeholders, and use live operating data to adjust decisions while freight is moving.

Shipsy is positioned around that broader logistics-orchestration model. Its cloud platform spans transportation management, carrier allocation, freight procurement, shipment tracking, route optimization, first-mile through last-mile workflows, and analytics. The company also emphasizes AI-enabled capabilities intended to automate planning and execution decisions across increasingly complex logistics networks.

The connection to exception management is significant. Transportation generates a constant stream of deviations: capacity changes, missed pickups, route delays, delivery risks, documentation problems, and customer-service exceptions. A platform that already coordinates transportation workflows has the opportunity to detect those events, assess their impact, and automate an appropriate response inside the same operating environment.

The buyer question is how well those capabilities scale across real-world complexity. Organizations should evaluate optimization quality, carrier and system connectivity, geographic depth, data latency, workflow configurability, and governance for automated actions. The most useful AI in transportation will be the AI that reliably improves execution, not simply the AI that adds another interface.

Shipsy is included in the Logistics Viewpoints Transportation Management Systems MarketMap and Autonomous Exception Management MarketMap. The combination reflects the increasingly close relationship between transportation management and the systems responsible for identifying and resolving operational exceptions.

The post Shipsy Connects Transportation Orchestration With Exception Response appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

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Beyond the Silos: Five Technology Markets Are Converging Into a New Supply Chain Architecture

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Join me on Thursday, October 29 at 11:00 AM ET for ARC Advisory Group’s webinar, Beyond the Silos: Five MarketMaps Shaping the Next Supply Chain Technology Architecture. We will use ARC’s MarketMaps for Warehouse Management Systems, Transportation Management Systems, Supply Chain Planning, Decision Intelligence, and Autonomous Exception Management to examine where these markets are converging, where they remain distinct, and what that means for the architecture you are building.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

If you are evaluating, replacing, or integrating supply chain technology, this is the conversation to have before your next major technology decision.

Supply chain technology has traditionally been organized into distinct application categories. Warehouse Management Systems managed activity inside the four walls. Transportation Management Systems planned and executed freight movements. Supply Chain Planning systems developed forecasts and plans. Other applications handled visibility, analytics, or specific operational problems.

Those distinctions made sense when the applications themselves operated largely as separate systems.

They make considerably less sense today.

The boundaries between supply chain technology markets are beginning to blur as vendors expand beyond their traditional domains and companies demand faster connections between planning, decision-making, exception management, and execution. The result is not necessarily the emergence of one enormous supply chain platform. Instead, we are seeing the development of a more interconnected technology architecture in which responsibilities increasingly overlap.

That creates both opportunity and complexity for supply chain technology buyers.

WMS and TMS Are Expanding Beyond Their Traditional Boundaries

Warehouse Management Systems remain responsible for the core disciplines of inventory movement, receiving, putaway, picking, packing, and shipping. But modern WMS platforms increasingly extend into labor management, robotics orchestration, yard operations, order fulfillment, transportation coordination, and broader execution workflows.

Transportation Management Systems are undergoing a similar evolution. TMS applications once focused primarily on load planning, carrier selection, tendering, and freight settlement. Today, many platforms incorporate real-time transportation visibility, appointment scheduling, dock coordination, capacity intelligence, analytics, and increasingly sophisticated decision support.

This means the boundary between warehouse and transportation execution is becoming increasingly important.

A trailer arriving at a distribution center is simultaneously a transportation event, a yard event, a dock event, and potentially a warehouse labor-planning event. The technology architecture has to reflect that operational reality.

The question is no longer simply whether a company needs WMS and TMS. The more interesting question is how those systems exchange information and coordinate decisions.

Supply Chain Planning Is Moving Closer to Execution

The same convergence is happening between planning and execution.

Historically, Supply Chain Planning systems developed plans that execution applications were expected to carry out. But a plan that cannot account for actual inventory, transportation capacity, warehouse constraints, labor availability, or changing demand conditions quickly loses value.

Planning therefore becomes much more powerful when it can incorporate execution realities.

The architectural challenge is closing the distance between identifying what should happen and understanding what can actually happen.

This is pushing planning systems toward more continuous planning processes while execution platforms increasingly incorporate predictive and prescriptive capabilities of their own.

The boundary between planning and execution is therefore becoming less of a handoff and more of a feedback loop.

Decision Intelligence Introduces Another Layer

Decision Intelligence adds another dimension to this architecture.

Supply chains generate thousands of decisions every day: whether to expedite an order, change a carrier, shift inventory, modify production, prioritize a customer, alter a fulfillment path, or respond to a disruption.

Traditionally, those decisions have been distributed across applications, business rules, spreadsheets, control towers, and human judgment.

Decision Intelligence technologies attempt to create a more systematic approach by combining data, analytics, business context, optimization, and increasingly artificial intelligence to help organizations evaluate available choices.

That raises an important architectural question.

Which system should actually own the decision?

A planning application may identify an inventory imbalance. A transportation system may recognize a capacity problem. A warehouse system may understand the operational constraints. A Decision Intelligence platform may evaluate several alternatives.

Determining where the decision should reside becomes as important as determining which systems provide the underlying information.

Autonomous Exception Management Addresses the Moment the Plan Breaks

Perhaps the most interesting emerging category is Autonomous Exception Management.

Supply chains rarely operate exactly according to plan. Shipments arrive late. Demand changes. Production lines stop. Inventory becomes unavailable. Weather disrupts transportation. Suppliers miss commitments.

Traditional systems frequently identify these problems but still rely heavily on people to determine what to do next.

Autonomous Exception Management attempts to shorten that cycle by identifying disruptions, understanding their business implications, evaluating potential responses, and in some cases initiating corrective action.

This represents an important shift.

Supply chain technology has spent decades becoming better at creating plans and executing transactions. The next frontier may be becoming better at managing the space between those two activities, when reality diverges from the plan.

That is also where Decision Intelligence, planning, transportation, warehouse execution, and exception management increasingly intersect.

The Architecture Matters More Than the Application Category

For technology buyers, these overlapping capabilities create a new challenge.

Simply comparing WMS vendors against other WMS vendors, or TMS vendors against other TMS vendors, does not necessarily reveal how a technology stack will operate as a whole.

Organizations increasingly need to ask architectural questions.

Where should planning occur? Which system should identify an exception? Which application has enough context to evaluate possible responses? Which system should initiate execution? What data needs to move between platforms? And where should humans remain directly involved in the decision?

There will not be one universal answer.

Different companies will make different architectural choices depending on their operational complexity, existing technology investments, organizational structure, and strategic priorities.

But one principle is becoming increasingly clear: adding another powerful application without understanding how it fits into the broader architecture can simply create another technology silo.

Five MarketMaps, One Emerging Architecture

On October 29, ARC Advisory Group will examine this convergence through five ARC MarketMaps: Warehouse Management Systems, Transportation Management Systems, Supply Chain Planning, Decision Intelligence, and Autonomous Exception Management.

These markets are not becoming identical. Each continues to address a distinct set of supply chain problems.

But the relationships between them are becoming increasingly important.

The next generation of supply chain architecture will likely be defined less by rigid application categories and more by how effectively companies connect four fundamental functions: planning what should happen, deciding what to do, managing what changes, and executing the response.

Understanding those relationships is becoming essential for organizations modernizing their supply chain technology environments.

Before You Make Your Next Supply Chain Technology Decision

If your company is buying, replacing, or integrating WMS, TMS, Supply Chain Planning, Decision Intelligence, or exception-management technology, the important question is no longer simply which product fits a category.

You also need to understand where that technology belongs in the larger architecture, what decisions it should own, what other systems it must work with, and where overlapping functionality creates either value or unnecessary complexity.

That is exactly what we will address in this webinar.

Join me Thursday, October 29 at 11:00 AM ET for Beyond the Silos: Five MarketMaps Shaping the Next Supply Chain Technology Architecture.

We will put all five markets on the table together and examine how planning, decisions, exceptions, transportation, and warehouse execution are beginning to form a broader supply chain technology architecture.

If you expect to make a significant supply chain technology decision over the next 12–24 months, register now. Make sure your next investment strengthens the architecture instead of becoming the next silo.

REGISTER NOW — OCTOBER 29, 11:00 AM ET

The post Beyond the Silos: Five Technology Markets Are Converging Into a New Supply Chain Architecture appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

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Decision Intelligence in 2026: From Analytical Insight to Consequential Decisions

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Decision Intelligence is best understood not as another AI label, but as the discipline of improving consequential decisions. Enterprises already have analytics, dashboards, planning systems, visibility platforms, and increasingly capable models; the real question is whether those capabilities materially improve a decision and shorten the path from changing conditions to coordinated action.

Analytics can explain what happened and predict what may happen. Decision Intelligence goes further by connecting the signal to context, tradeoffs, priorities, and an operating choice. The difference is material: a forecast has value only when the organization can decide what to change because of it. The earlier discussion of a logistics control layer helps locate Decision Intelligence architecturally: between observed operating state and the governed actions that established execution systems must carry out.

ERP, planning, TMS, WMS, visibility, risk, and network platforms remain systems of record and execution; decision intelligence sits above and across them where context is assembled, tradeoffs are evaluated, actions are prioritized, and responses are coordinated. This is why traditional application boundaries are beginning to blur. Planning, visibility, risk, logistics, and enterprise platforms can all participate if they demonstrate real decision depth rather than simply expose more information.

The relevant examples include rebalancing inventory after a disruption, protecting a priority customer during constrained capacity, choosing among freight alternatives, responding to supplier risk, or deciding whether an exception should be automated, escalated, or left alone. Buyers should ask what decision is improved, what context is assembled, what tradeoffs are evaluated, what authority is required, and how the chosen action reaches execution. If those answers remain vague, the product may be analytics or workflow rather than Decision Intelligence.

A platform can be deep in one decision domain or broad across many functions. Neither is universally better. The right fit depends on the decisions the enterprise is trying to improve, the time horizon, the data and systems involved, and whether coordination across organizational boundaries is central to the problem.

Evaluate decision fit, decision depth, operating reach, context quality, scenario and tradeoff capability, workflow and execution connectivity, governance, explainability, evidence quality, and referenceable outcomes and measure decision quality, decision latency, recommendation acceptance, outcome improvement, operating reach, scenario usefulness, cross-functional coordination, execution connectivity, auditability, and measurable business impact. The strongest proof is not an AI feature list; it is a referenceable operating outcome showing better decision quality, faster response, or improved coordination.

The shift from insight to consequential decisions is what makes Decision Intelligence strategically interesting. It focuses the market on the business outcome that matters: not how much intelligence a platform can produce, but whether the organization makes a better decision because of it.

Decision Intelligence has to reach a consequential operating choice

The strongest way to keep the category disciplined is to begin with a decision class rather than a technology label. A platform may use optimization, machine learning, simulation, generative AI, knowledge graphs, workflow, or event intelligence. Those technologies are relevant only insofar as they improve the quality, speed, coordination, or traceability of an actual supply chain decision.

That standard also separates DI from horizontal analytics and generic enterprise AI. Buyers should ask what changed because the platform was present: which option was selected differently, which tradeoff became visible, which response happened sooner, which approval path became clearer, and whether the decision reached execution. The output is not the end product; the improved decision is.

Related Logistics Viewpoints research

2026 Supply Chain Decision Intelligence Market Map
The New Architecture of Logistics
Systems Engineering in Logistics
What Is Supply Chain Decision Intelligence, and Why It Matters Now

Request the 2026 Supply Chain Decision Intelligence Market Map Brochure

The 2026 Market Map is designed to help organizations understand the structure of the Decision Intelligence market, evaluate provider differences, and identify the capabilities most relevant to their operating environment. If your organization is evaluating Decision Intelligence platforms or clarifying where decision intelligence fits within the broader technology architecture, I would be glad to provide the Market Map brochure and discuss the evaluation questions and provider differences most relevant to your requirements.

Request the Decision Intelligence Market Map Brochure

For technology providers

Providers may request the brochure, discuss the research framework, or contact me to confirm how their capabilities are represented in the market assessment.

Discuss the research or confirm your profile

The post Decision Intelligence in 2026: From Analytical Insight to Consequential Decisions appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

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