Brian Fugate, Ph.D.

At the 2025 Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in Denver, Scott Luton sat down with Fred Baumann, Senior Industry Principal at Kinaxis, one of the world’s most recognized leaders in supply chain planning and orchestration. Kinaxis has spent over four decades shaping the planning landscape and has been named to the Gartner Leaders Quadrant an extraordinary 11 consecutive times—a testament to its execution strength and long-term vision. Baumann’s role at Kinaxis centers on helping chief supply chain officers and senior leaders shape their strategic transformation roadmaps, quantify value, and build the business cases necessary to achieve breakthrough outcomes.   From Episodic Disruptions to Continuous Turbulence When asked about old and new challenges facing supply chain planning teams, Baumann observed a major shift: disruption is no longer episodic—it’s continuous. Historically, companies faced major disruptions every few years. Today, volatility and constraint-related challenges—whether driven by tariffs, sourcing changes, geopolitical shifts, or supply shortages—are unfolding weekly or even daily. This environment demands a new way of working. The speed of global business is accelerating, and uncertainty is at historic highs. As Baumann noted, organizations must now adjust their supply chains “much faster than they had to even last year.” The shift isn’t only…

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now. On Monday’s episode of Supply Chain Now, Scott Luton leads the conversation on reverse logistics and welcomes Tony Sciarrotta with RLA and Rich Bulger with Cisco to the show. On This Week in Business History, Scott tells the rags to riches story of Airbnb and more. On Tuesday we released a classic episode of TEKTOK in which Karin Bursa shares the 3 Things C-Level Execs Need to Know About Sales & Operations Planning and Inventory Optimization. On Tuesday we also released a new episode of TECHquila Sunrise. Greg White welcomed Kubera Venture Capital’s Balaji Gopinath and special guest Robin Gregg, CEO of RoadSync. On Wednesday, Scott had the opportunity to talk with some of the University of Georgia’s up-and-coming Supply Chain Rising stars, Jessie Bailey and Elena Griggs. We also released another episode of the Supply Chain Buzz featuring Mike Griswold, and presented by OMNIA Partners. Scott, Greg, and Mike discussed everything from rising COVID-19 infections impact of the supply chain to the United Nations response to climate change. On Friday, host Page Siplon sat down with Griff Lynch…