Mark Messina

Special Guest Blog Post written by Jeff Echel and Steve Lykken with e2open   Supply chain planners in high-tech don’t just manage shipments; they’re crisis managers, data detectives, and sometimes, referees in a high-stakes game of inventory tug-of-war. Why do these planners find themselves huddled in “war rooms,” surrounded by spreadsheets and urgent emails? It starts with relentless pressure: customers expect rapid, reliable service, but the reality is a maze of long lead times, outsourced manufacturing, and unpredictable global logistics. Securing critical components can take months, and a single misstep, like overstocking or missing a shipment, can ripple through the business, impacting revenue and margins. The chaos: War rooms and spreadsheet battles Add to that, the complexity of forecasting demand. Planners reconcile noisy, inconsistent data from retailers and distributors, often with little visibility, into . Forecasts are built, torn down, and rebuilt, sometimes manually, as teams try to align bottom-up channel data with top-down financial targets. Meanwhile, supply plans are constantly threatened by shortages, excess inventory, and last-minute changes. When demand surges or supply is disrupted, channels compete for limited stock, sometimes “stealing” from each other, and sometimes winning simply by being the loudest voice in the room. All of…

It’s a supply chain summer! Check out all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now. On Monday, we released 3 new episodes! On this episode of Supply Chain Now, Ratelinx’s Nate Endicott, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Alliances, and Andrew Hooser, Vice President of Customer Solutions, discuss their company’s journey with Co-hosts Greg White and Scott Luton. On This Week in Business History, host Scott W. Luton picks up on the story of 3 legendary pioneers: Marie Curie, Alan Turing and Ed Bradley. On Supply Chain Now en Espanol, host Enrique Alvarez welcomes special guest Demos Perez to the podcast to get an update on supply chain and logistics in Panama and the rest of Latin America. On Tuesday, Mike Griswold, Vice President of Research at Gartner, joined our hosts Scott Luton and Greg White on the Supply Chain Now podcast to talk about the latest in retail supply chains from an analyst’s perspective. On Wednesday, Gifts for Good’s Chief Impact Officer Jenise Steverding joined our Logistics with Purpose podcast to share how she melded a knack for logistics with a propensity for giving back with hosts Enrique Alvarez and…