For decades, energy sat quietly in the background of supply chain operations. It showed up in utility bills, fuel surcharges, and cost-to-serve models, but rarely shaped network design or operational strategy.

That era is over.

Energy has become a defining constraint in modern supply chains. Rising costs, grid instability, decarbonization mandates, and geopolitical volatility are forcing leaders to treat energy not as an overhead expense, but as a variable that directly affects resilience, reliability, and competitive performance.

When energy availability or pricing shifts, the impacts cascade across production schedules, transportation capacity, warehouse operations, and service commitments. The organizations that recognize this early are beginning to redesign their networks accordingly.

Why Energy Now Shapes Supply Chain Performance

Energy pressure is arriving from multiple directions at once.

Costs are rising and becoming more volatile, making long-term planning more difficult. Grid reliability is uneven across regions, exposing facilities to operational risk. Regulatory requirements around emissions reporting and reduction are expanding rapidly. At the same time, geopolitical events are reshaping fuel markets and access to critical energy inputs.

Taken together, these forces mean that energy can no longer be optimized locally. Decisions about where to manufacture, how to transport goods, how to operate warehouses, and how to buffer inventory are now inseparable from energy considerations.

Treating energy as an externality leads to brittle networks. Treating it as a design variable leads to resilience.

From Energy Use to Energy Visibility

One of the core challenges is that many supply chains still lack visibility into how energy flows through their operations.

Energy consumption is often tracked separately from operational performance, if it’s tracked at all. Production metrics live in one system, transportation costs in another, warehouse energy use in yet another. Without a unified view, leaders struggle to understand tradeoffs, such as whether a lower-cost transportation lane introduces higher energy exposure, or whether a more automated facility increases throughput while raising peak energy risk.

Visibility is the prerequisite for control. Without it, organizations react to energy disruptions rather than planning around them.

Designing Networks for a Constrained Energy Environment

The question is no longer how to reduce energy costs in isolation. The real question is how to design supply chain networks that can operate reliably under energy constraints.

That requires:

Understanding how energy intensity varies across nodes and lanes

Managing exposure to price volatility and availability shocks

Aligning operational decisions with sustainability and regulatory objectives

Building flexibility into networks so they can adapt as energy conditions change

This is not about chasing short-term savings. It is about long-term operability.

A Practical Guide for Supply Chain Leaders

The white paper Energy in the Supply Chain: Designing Networks that Optimize Consumption, Withstand Volatility, and Adapt to a Changing Energy Landscape was written to help supply chain leaders think through these issues systematically.

Rather than treating energy as a sustainability sidebar, the guide examines how energy flows through the supply chain end-to-end, from production and transportation to warehousing and fulfillment. It focuses on practical approaches for reducing energy intensity, managing risk, and making design decisions that hold up under uncertainty.

The emphasis is on decision support, not theory.

Download the Guide

If you are responsible for supply chain design, operations, or resilience planning, this guide will help you reframe energy from a background cost into a core operational consideration.

Download: Energy in the Supply Chain — Designing Networks that Optimize Consumption, Withstand Volatility, and Adapt to a Changing Energy Landscape

Understanding the intersection of energy strategy and supply chain design is no longer optional. It is becoming a requirement for operating reliably in an increasingly constrained environment.

The post Energy Is No Longer an Overhead – It’s a Supply Chain Constraint appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

In this week’s update, the global trade landscape takes center stage as a landmark U.S.-India agreement promises to slash tariffs and reshape sourcing strategies by March. Domestically, the push for resilience is accelerating through massive infrastructure investments, from Eli Lilly’s new $3.5 billion pharmaceutical hub to the launch of “Project Vault,” a $12 billion critical minerals reserve. As legal wins for offshore wind projects further signal a shift in energy logistics, the underlying challenge remains data orchestration; we look at why unifying fragmented systems is now the baseline for navigating these complex market fluctuations.

India and the U.S. Make Trade Announcements, Resulting in Reduced Tariffs

The recent trade announcement between the U.S. and India represents a significant shift in strategic intent, with Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal confirming on February 5, 2026, that a formal deal is expected to be signed in March. While the proposed reduction of U.S. tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18% and India’s potential pivot from Russian oil to at least $500 billion in American energy and technology purchases offer major competitive implications, the deal currently lacks the granular detail required for immediate execution. A joint statement is expected within days to outline the first official timeline, yet for supply chain professionals, uncertainty remains regarding specific HS code tariff schedules and rules of origin. Until formal documentation is finalized next month, logistics leaders should treat these developments as strategic options, focusing on scenario modeling and monitoring regulatory updates before committing to structural shifts in sourcing or manufacturing.

Unifying Real-Time Data for End-to-End Supply Chain Orchestration with Intersystems

Achieving true end-to-end supply chain orchestration requires overcoming the persistent barrier of siloed and fragmented data. A recent survey of 450 supply chain practitioners highlights that nearly half of organizations struggle with little to no integration across disparate systems, leading to significant gaps in visibility and operational transparency. To move beyond traditional management silos, many leaders are turning toward an “ultimate control tower” approach, which utilizes real-time data and predictive modeling to synchronize planning, sourcing, and logistics. By adopting a framework that emphasizes seeing, understanding, and optimizing data before acting, companies can gain the agility needed to respond to market fluctuations and disruptions. Ultimately, unifying data across multi-tier networks allows for faster decision-making and improved margins without the need to replace existing legacy systems.

Eli Lilly and Company Announces Multi-Million Dollar Facility for Next Gen Weight Loss

Eli Lilly and Company has announced a $3.5 billion investment to build a new injectable medicine and device manufacturing facility in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. This site, the tenth U.S. manufacturing facility announced by the company since 2020, will focus on producing next-generation weight-loss therapies, specifically the investigational triple hormone receptor agonist retatrutide. The project is expected to create 850 high-value permanent roles and 2,000 construction jobs, with operations slated to begin in 2031. To ensure a resilient and modern supply chain, Lilly plans to integrate advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and real-time data analytics. This expansion not only bolsters domestic production of essential medicines but is also expected to drive significant local economic activity, further strengthening the regional life sciences infrastructure.

U.S. Administration Announces “Project Vault,” a $12 Billion Initiative to Establish a Critical Minerals Reserve

The administration has launched “Project Vault,” a $12 billion initiative to establish a U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve aimed at reducing dependence on foreign supply chains for essential materials. This public-private partnership is backed by a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and $2 billion in private sector financing, with initial participation from major OEMs like General Motors, Boeing, and Western Digital. Designed to protect industries such as defense, energy, and automotive from supply shocks, the reserve functions similarly to the strategic petroleum reserve by stockpiling minerals vital for national security and economic stability. For supply chain managers, this project represents a long-term effort to stabilize the domestic industrial base and mitigate risks associated with foreign-controlled materials, supported by ongoing federal efforts to bolster mining and processing operations within the U.S.

Judge Lifts Ban on Another North East Offshore Wind Project

A federal judge on Monday allowed the 924-megawatt Sunrise Wind project, located off the east coast of New York, to resume construction after it was halted by a sweeping stop-work order issued by the Trump Administration in December. The project, which is nearly halfway complete, was expected to begin producing electricity this year before the order. The December order had cited “ambiguous national security concerns” as the reason for stopping Sunrise Wind and other offshore wind farms. However, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reviewed the classified report detailing those threats and found the justification insufficient. He granted project developer Ørsted a preliminary injunction, allowing work to proceed while the legal complaint is processed.

Song of the week:

The post Supply Chain and Logistics News (February 2nd-5th 2026) appeared first on Logistics Viewpoints.

ALDOT leverages Blyncsy to improve statewide asset surveys and strengthen data-driven maintenance planning

EXTON, Pa., February 5, 2026 — Bentley Systems, Incorporated (Nasdaq: BSY), the infrastructure engineering software company, announced today the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) is using Bentley’s Blyncsy solution to enhance its existing performance-based budgeting process for highway maintenance. ALDOT adopted a performance-based budgeting model more than 15 years ago and continues to refine its implementation to ensure maintenance funds are allocated based on objective, data-driven insights.

Historically, collecting asset condition data across Alabama’s 11,000 miles of roadway network has required significant manual effort and resources. While ALDOT has long employed a data-driven statewide survey, traditional methods, such as manual inspections, are labor-intensive and can introduce inconsistencies. To improve efficiency and accuracy, ALDOT is incorporating Blyncsy’s automated AI analytics into its established process, providing a faster and more consistent assessment of specific designated roadway assets.

Blyncsy, part of Bentley’s Asset Analytics portfolio, uses crowdsourced high-resolution dash camera imagery from vehicles and applies AI to automatically analyze roadway conditions. This provides a consistent, empirical assessment of critical assets, such as guardrails and signage to name a few, across the entire roadway network. A previous pilot project demonstrated that Blyncsy’s AI models achieved 97% accuracy, providing the reliable data foundation required for precise financial planning.

“To strengthen our performance-based budgeting, we need consistent, quantified data to produce condition assessments across all districts,” said Morgan Musick, Assistant Maintenance Management Engineer at ALDOT. “Bentley’s Blyncsy solution helps us enhance our existing statewide survey by automating certain asset inspections. This technology helps to give us an objective snapshot of our roadway network, enabling us to adjust budgets based on actual asset conditions and ensure funding goes to appropriate maintenance activities in order to better reach a target Level of Service for each asset.”

Mark Pittman, senior director of Transportation AI at Bentley Systems, added, “The future of infrastructure asset management depends on making financial decisions based on empirical evidence rather than historical precedent. By integrating AI-powered asset inspection into its performance-based budgeting process, ALDOT is setting a new standard for data-driven infrastructure planning.”

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About Bentley Systems

Around the world, infrastructure professionals rely on software from Bentley Systems to help them design, build, and operate better and more resilient infrastructure for transportation, water, energy, cities, and more. Founded in 1984 by engineers for engineers, Bentley is the partner of choice for engineering firms and owner-operators worldwide, with software that spans engineering disciplines, industry sectors, and all phases of the infrastructure lifecycle. Through our digital twin solutions, we help infrastructure professionals unlock the value of their data to transform project delivery and asset performance.

For more information, contact:

Bentley Press: Michaela Romero, pr@news.bentley.com

Bentley Investors: Eric Boyer, IR@bentley.com

© 2026 Bentley Systems, Incorporated. Bentley, the Bentley logo, and Blyncsy are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. All other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

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