Change Management – Supply Chain Shaman

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Teaching Your Organization to Jump

Remember the story of the frog in the pot of water? If the water temperature rises slowly, the frog doesn’t recognize the danger until it is too late. Put the frog directly into boiling water, and it jumps.

I think the analogy applies to today’s supply chains.

Companies are absorbing increasing volatility and complexity without fundamentally redefining how work gets done. Companies have confused historic practices with best practices. They are now taking those same processes and attempting to automate them with agents and agentic AI—without first stopping to ask a more fundamental question: Is it time to jump? Here I give a five-step action plan.

September 25, 2026 No Comments

analytics

Lead Time: A Broken Gossamer

If you are struggling with supply chain planning, dancing in the light of shiny objects, and scratching your head, please read on. My goal is to help you.

Please do not AI Stupid. What do I mean? AI Stupid is putting agents and agentics on top of existing architectures believing that making them faster and hands free add value. To me, this is fools play.

I love AI. I am excited about new technologies. To this end, I want to shine a light on how new technologies can help address the black holes and inconsistencies in today’s supply chain, which largely stem from the limitations of the first generation of supply chain planning and execution technologies. In this blog, I give you three places to start.

July 16, 2026 No Comments

Change Management

Do You Need a Supply Chain Coach?

Supply chain is where the rubber hits the road. For a public company, over 40% of market capitalization is tied to the trade-offs between growth, operating margin, inventory management, and Return on Capital Employed.

The road for supply chain improvement is fraught with issues. Here we share some and offer some advice.

July 9, 2026 No Comments

analytics

Case Study: A Scrappy Demand Management Approach

This study of Franklin Sports shines a light on the work that needs to be done at the sales account level to challenge a retail forecast, and also highlights the importance of a new technique for a forecast engine — reinforcement learning.

Artificial intelligence comes in many forms — large language models, generative AI, machine learning, unstructured text mining, deep learning, neural networks, reinforcement learning, agents, and agentics. While the industry is wigging out about agentics, I think reinforcement learning is a great step forward in the journey of Artificial Intelligence.

June 9, 2026 No Comments

Big data supply chains

Digital Transformation: Where Was the Beef?

Where is the Beef? is now a colloquialism. The phrase started as a line in an advertisement in 1984 for Wendy’s hamburgers. I remember sitting

December 9, 2025 No Comments

Change Management

If Only the Supply Chain was Reconfigured

The populist narrative of supply chains focuses on sourcing ignoring the impact of historic practices that are no longer best practices creating waste and inefficiencies.

August 12, 2024 No Comments

Big data supply chains

Aligning Supply Chain Metrics to Improve Value

What metrics should supply chain leaders use to drive value? Here we answer this question and share a metrics hierarchy for consideration.

May 21, 2024 No Comments

analytics

Mea Culpa

Reflection and restatement of formerly held beliefs of supply chain management by Lora Cecere.

May 10, 2024 No Comments

analytics

Are You Caught in Word Salad Dribble?

A discussion on data latency and distortion and why it should come first before defining the supply chain architecture.

February 1, 2024 No Comments

Change Management

Not To Be A Losing Pawn

When I was a teenager, I spent afternoons after school with my dad. As he lost his vision to macular degeneration, he taught me to

November 21, 2023 No Comments

Category: Change Management