Rik Vera

National Supply Chain Day (NSCD)® returns on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 with Supply Chain Now, bringing together professionals across the industry for an annual celebration dedicated to recognizing and elevating the people, processes, and innovations that keep the world moving. Established in 2020, National Supply Chain Day® was created as a way to lift the supply chain industry up and propel it forward by spotlighting the stories, leaders, and breakthroughs that shape global commerce. What began as a single-day celebration has grown into an industry-wide movement that continues to inspire pride, visibility, and momentum across the profession. Supply Chain Now will host its annual National Supply Chain Day Livestream, led by SCN’s own Scott Luton (CEO & Founder) and Mary Kate Love (President & the visionary behind the creation of NSCD) with a keynote from Billy Ray Taylor and the announcement of two new award recipients. And, for the first time ever, organizations can officially register both virtual and in-person National Supply Chain Day events on the Supply Chain Now website. From the logistics behind everyday essentials to the complex global networks delivering critical goods worldwide, National Supply Chain Day® honors the professionals who connect the world.   Livestream Registration…

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…