Lorraine Balog

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now. We started our week off with a Dial P for Procurement episode hosted by Kelly and Scott. They welcomed Member Services Manager at Una, Crystal Villareal and Philip Ideson, Founder and Managing Director, Art of Procurement. During the show, they discussed how to convert your vision for customer experiences into a set of tasks and priorities that guide your daily work and more. On This Week in Business History, Kelly has a very exciting lineup of stories! The topics in this episode ranged from the founder of the first African-American magazine to the introduction of the ATM. On Tuesday, Scott had the great opportunity of interviewing Dan Gingiss, Chief Experience Officer at The Experience Maker, LLC. In this episode, Scott talks with Dan about the secrets behind crafting remarkable customer interactions. On Wednesday, we published another episode of Logistics With Purpose with hosts Enrique Alverez, Matilda Ahrin, and Books for Africa’s Pat Plonski. The special guest for this episode was Madame Ambassador Hilda Suka Mafudze with the African Union. As you listen to this episode, look forward to learning…

At the jampacked MODEX 2026 in Atlanta, Scott Luton sat down with Brian Devine, President & CEO of Ignite Industrial Professionals, for a grounded and timely conversation about one of the most pressing issues in global supply chain: the workforce. While automation continues to dominate headlines, Devine makes one thing clear: people are still at the center of it all. And finding them is getting harder by the day.   “Fingerprints on Every Box” Despite rapid advancements in robotics and automation, Devine emphasizes a fundamental truth that often gets overlooked. “There’s still… fingerprints on boxes. Somebody’s putting their fingerprints on tons of boxes to move it to the next phase of the supply chain,” he explains. Even in many highly automated environments, human labor remains essential. Devine shares an example of a cutting-edge facility where autonomous forklifts handle part of the process, but still rely on human operators to complete the job. The takeaway? Automation is largely augmenting, rather than replacing, the workforce. And that makes the labor shortage even more critical to address.   A Shrinking Labor Pool One of the most compelling parts of the discussion centers on simple supply-and-demand economics. The labor pool isn’t just tight. It’s…