Melissa Dietz

Rolling right through mid-September with more great interviews, conversations, livestreams, and episodes!   For a bonus episode on Saturday, Jamin welcomed Jeff Lerner to the podcast on the new program, Logistics & Beyond, for a discussion about the power of relationships in professional growth.   Supply Chain Now · “Logistics & Beyond: The Power of Relationships in Professional Growth”   On Monday, Scott dug back into the archives for This Week in Business History, and discussed JC Penney, Karsten Solheim, & more.   Supply Chain Now · “This Week in Business History for September 14th: JC Penney, Karsten Solheim, & More”   On Tuesday, Scott and Greg welcomed Eric Rempel with Redwood Logistics and talked about Next-Generation Third Party Logistics.   Supply Chain Now · “Next Generation Third-Party Logistics: Eric Rempel with Redwood Logistics”   On Wednesday, Scott and Greg welcomed Patrick Kelly with The Produce Industry Podcast and Michael Chavez with Golden Star Citrus for a great podcast-crossover collaboration!   Supply Chain Now · “Pioneering Leaders in the Produce Industry: Patrick Kelly & Michael Chavez”   On Thursday, we published Greg’s TECHquila Sunrise, with special guest, Benjamin Gordon, with Cambridge Capital.   Supply Chain Now · “Scrappy Underdog to…

Special Guest Blog Post written by Deborah Dull   Imagine it’s launch season in your supply chain, and a team of AI agents is hard at work: coordinating shipments with suppliers, allocating inventory, and handling a missed delivery. It’s hard to go a day without hearing about the latest AI headlines: new LLMs, new applications, new use cases. These discussions are part of my every day. Business leaders and IT teams are eager to explore – and they have a lot of questions… and apprehension. In these discussions, we have found one framework that lands consistently: consider AI agents like new hires, not new software.   Step 1: Hire Like You Mean It Just like hiring humans, this step is about defining what you need. The first decision is the purpose of the role: what problems are you trying to solve? Where are your people overwhelmed? Where is your business growing in coming months? From here, the next decision is to build the business case just like you would for a new headcount. For example, consider the ROI of having a digital employee who can process supplier performance data 24/7. Now, decide on the type of agent that will join…