Explore how supply chain consultancy helps leaders manage disruption, strengthen resilience, reduce risk, and respond to shifting global supply chain trends.

From past to present

Supply chain management today is a practice of managing continuous disruption. Not since the period following WWII, when wartime advances in operations research began reshaping logistics and operations management, have we seen disruption on the scale of the past six years. The comparison is useful. After WWII, global trade collapsed, and manufacturing capacity was devastated across much of Europe, Russia, and Asia. Things today are, of course, not as severe, but the challenges of continuous disruption are uniquely complex compared to any point in the post-WWII era.

Why has supply chain strategy become so critical to success?

Over the past fifty years, globalization and the rise of information technology reshaped supply chain strategy, making it possible to create and manage the highly complex global networks we know today. Still, many techniques developed during this period have fallen short in the face of ongoing disruption. These techniques, such as just-in-time (JIT) inventory, offshoring, and Lean manufacturing (continuous flow), were revolutionary in their heyday, and certainly remain valuable today. However, during the supply shortages infamous during the pandemic, they left many companies without the agility and supply chain resilience needed to succeed. 

Today, a new set of priorities is taking hold. In the aftermath of the pandemic came the extraordinary rise of generative AI. At the same time, sustainability pressure, changing consumer expectations, geopolitical risk, labor constraints, and growing demands for resilience have complicated the traditional mandate to simply deliver products better, faster, cheaper. 

For supply chain leaders, this means efficiency can no longer be the only measure of success. Companies still need to control cost and inventory, but they also must plan for suppliers going offline, trade routes changing, demand shifting unexpectedly, and other disruptions once treated as exceptions.

What are the biggest supply chain challenges today?

Supply chain leaders are being asked to manage many competing priorities today. This can really be boiled down to the challenge of moving from managing relatively stable systems to building agile systems for an unstable world. The challenges of this instability are as varied as they are complex, and we are increasingly finding that our supply chain models were built for a world we no longer live in.

Raw material costs are rising not only in response to tariffs but also to wars and related closures of maritime shipping routes. Regional instability and geopolitical risk have also become major sources of supply chain risk. At the same time, the uncertainty introduced by these actions has weakened employment in sectors such as manufacturing and retail. The impact, however, has not been uniformly distributed. 

Indeed, tariff effects, geopolitical instability, inflation, and responses of shifting demand vary significantly by industry, geography, and market segments. This is where supply chain market research can benefit business leaders. It helps organizations separate temporary disruption from structural change, the signal from the noise. As operating environments continue to become more dynamic, executives need high-quality market intelligence to make the right decisions about where risk is acceptable, where to invest in building flexibility, and where changing market conditions are creating new opportunities. 

New trends in supply chain management

Globalization, which peaked in the 1990s and 2000s, was characterized by production moving from advanced economies to low-cost countries. Many today believe that we are seeing de-globalization. What is more likely is that we are seeing supply chains respond to the call for “local content”, where production happens in the market or country where products are sold. This trend, which has been growing since the 2010s, has now become more prevalent in response to tariffs. 

Moreover, US companies are shifting production away from China to countries like Vietnam and Mexico. China, on the other hand, has spent more than $200B in the past three years building factories abroad, according to The Economist. This constitutes a multi-objective approach—not only are they reducing the impact of tariffs, but they are also diversifying risk by no longer depending on a single-country supply base. 

The common thread across these trends is not the end of globalization, but rather, its reinvention. Supply chains are becoming more regional, more diversified, and increasingly dependent on technology to manage complexity. Along with technological trends like digital twins, circular manufacturing, composable software, and AI, a digital arms race is underway to reduce time to market, product costs, and the amount of time it takes to respond to disruption. 

Putting resilience into practice

Schneider Electric provides an example of what this new supply chain thinking looks like in practice. Rather than retreating from globalization, the company has been reorganizing its supply chain around regional hubs. A transformation designed to operate closer to customers while maintaining the benefits of a global network.

The company is moving toward sourcing and manufacturing roughly 90% of what it sells within these major regional hubs. In North America, Schneider has also announced more than $700 million in additional U.S. investment through 2027, building on previous investments aimed at increasing domestic manufacturing capacity and shortening supply chains. Technology is the other side of the company’s strategy. Schneider is expanding AI-supported planning, predictive analytics, real-time visibility, and digital tools across its operations.

The results have gained outside recognition when the World Economic Forum added two of its plants to its Lighthouse Network—a community of the world’s most advanced manufacturing and supply chain operations. Additionally, major analyst firms have awarded the company the best global supply chain for the past four years.

From uncertainty to action: The role of supply chain market research

There is no single solution to continuous disruption. The right sourcing strategy, inventory policy, technology investment, or regional footprint will vary considerably by company, industry, and market. What is increasingly clear, however, is that companies need better intelligence to make these decisions with confidence.

For supply chain leaders, the questions are becoming more specific:

• Which regions present opportunities that benefit from industry clustering?
• When and where should a company invest in nearshoring, reshoring, or regional hubs?
• How will customers respond to price increases made to offset tariffs?
• Which disruptions can be turned into competitive advantage?

With strategic intelligence, opportunity assessments, and supplier and customer research, supply chain market research provides business leaders with the data they need to make the right decisions and answer questions like these. These insights can help organizations identify risk, evaluate new markets, and build supply chains that are more agile, resilient, and responsive to change.

End Notes

 World Economic Forum. New Global Lighthouse Sites Demonstrate How AI Is Rewiring Manufacturing and Supply Chains. June 22,2026