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manufacturing supply chain issues
April 6, 2026
Why Your Supply Chain Team Spends More Time in Outlook Than Your ERP
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…
September 24, 2021
This Week In Supply Chain Now: September 20th – September 24th
Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now! On Monday, we started the week off with a special episode of our #SupplyChainCity series Supply Chain Now with Scott Luton and special host Ben Harris. These two chat with Stacey Key, President and CEO of the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council, and George Richter, SVP of Supply Chain Management at Cox. On This Week In Business History, Kelly covers the stories of three unsung heroes who have contributed their knowledge and talents to a few surprising industries. On Tuesday, we released a classic TEKTOK episode with host Karin Bursa, and featuring Craig Ablin, a supply chain management expert who has spent over 25 years in the industry. On Wednesday’s episode of Supply Chain Now, Scott welcomes back special guest host Ward Richmond and professional OTR driver and training engineer for Schneider, Kellylynn McLaughlin. On Thursday, Scott and guest host Tony Sciarotta welcomed Executive Chairman of G2 Reverse Logistics, Herb Shear, in another episode of our Reverse Logistics Series. On Friday, we published Monday’s Supply Chain Buzz livestream. Scott and Greg welcomed James Malley, the Co-Founder and CEO of…