Gillan Hawkes

Brought to you in partnership with the Journal of Business Logistics   Companies are investing heavily in safety technology. Trucking fleets now rely on cameras, collision warnings, lane alerts, adaptive cruise control, and automated braking to reduce crashes and protect drivers. That investment assumes a straightforward outcome. More technology should lead to safer behavior. It does not always work that way. Research in the Journal of Business Logistics shows that the same technologies designed to improve safety can also undermine it. The difference comes down to how drivers experience the tools and how managers use them. The problem is not the system. It is the interaction around it.   How safety technology fails in practice The study points to two common patterns that show up across fleets. The first is avoidance. Some drivers ignore or disable alerts. They cover inward-facing cameras or override automated features. This behavior shows up when the system feels intrusive or disconnected from real driving conditions. Frequent warnings and false alarms create frustration. Experienced drivers, in particular, may feel the technology challenges their judgment rather than supports it. When that happens, drivers do not adapt to the system. They route around it. The second pattern is…

Special Guest Blog Post written by Philip Vervloesem   If your supply chain planning still runs on a monthly cycle, 2026 will be uncomfortable. We are operating in a polycrisis where change is constant, and responses need to be fast enough to keep up. From customer conversations, industry research, and leadership discussions at the Gartner supply chain conferences, a clear pattern has emerged: the organizations pulling ahead are not planning more often. They are embedding agility, intelligence, and speed into the way they make decisions. Here are five predictions shaping supply chain excellence in 2026 – our “bingo card” for what’s now table stakes.   1. Continuous, always-on planning is a must Monthly or quarterly cycles are no longer enough. The organizations that outperform treat planning as a continuous capability embedded in daily operations, and make it part of their governance and operational excellence. Imagine this: a sudden surge in demand hits or a supplier flags a delay. Instead of waiting for the next planning cycle, teams immediately evaluate options, share insights across functions, and adjust course. Planning stops being a calendar exercise and starts shaping real-time decisions.   “By shifting from process-centric to decision-centric planning, we now run hundreds…