Brandon Mason

written by Nick Gospodinov, Founder & CEO of Mandel AI   There is a dirty secret in supply chain management: the most critical information about your orders, delays, and supplier commitments doesn’t live in your ERP. It lives in email. Not in dashboards. Not in control towers. In inboxes. Ask any procurement manager what they do first thing in the morning, and the answer is almost always the same: open Outlook, start scrolling. A supplier confirmed a ship date in a reply chain. A freight forwarder flagged a delay in an attachment. A pricing update came through as a PDF buried in a thread from two weeks ago. This is the real operating system of supply chain, and it has no search, no alerts, no reconciliation, and no memory.   The Coordination Gap No One Talks About The supply chain technology market has poured billions into planning, visibility, and execution systems. These tools work when the data is clean, structured, and already inside the system. The problem is that the most operationally critical information never makes it there in time. Manufacturers and distributors manage hundreds, sometimes thousands, of supplier relationships. Each one generates a constant stream of unstructured communication: order…

Warehousing historically hasn’t been a particularly exciting topic. But times have changed. Thanks to technological innovations, warehouse automation has made the receiving, housing, and distributing of goods truly fascinating stuff. At Supply Chain Now, we spotlight companies doing exciting things throughout the industry. In modern warehousing, the innovations garnering attention include systems integrations involving robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI); the use of optical character recognition (OCR) technology in yard management; an “elegant” automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS); and a solution called Chuck. Warehousing at a Crossroads: Innovation for Efficiency “The warehousing industry is experiencing a technological revolution, with advancements in automation, robotics, IoT, AI, and data analytics transforming operations and driving efficiency. These innovations are not just enhancing operational capabilities but are also paving the way for smarter, more connected, and efficient warehouse environments,” an October report by Taiwan-based logistics property developer ALP said. ALP said AS/RSs, automated guided vehicles (AGVs), and robotics “are at the forefront of the smart warehousing revolution. These systems enhance efficiency, reduce labor costs, and improve accuracy.” AI and Robotics: A New Frontier for Modern Warehousing A Forbes Council post in November said that “one of the most visible impacts of AI and…