Highlights of 2025 & Priorities Going Forward
Global supply chains started a full transformation in 2025 spurred on with geopolitical risk and encouraged by tariffs, and the pace accelerates as the New Year kicks off with geopolitics dominating the conversation and fundamentals making a comeback. Executives have judiciously decided to limit heightened risk, take advantage of tax and deregulatory benefits, and go all in with artificial intelligence, advanced technologies and predictive processes such as SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning). The priority going forward will be to take advantage of the vast opportunities that will arise from shifts in the global supply chain, innovations from forward-thinking executives, and simply paying attention to changing needs.
Accomplishments & What We Learned in 2025
Since manufacturing has been in a recession for a few years, it wasn’t a robust year for most, if not all sectors in manufacturing. Proactive companies and clients took advantage of the opportunity to roll out R&D/ new product launches, process improvements, system upgrades, upskilling programs, production reallocations, and supply chain configurations to support customer and EBITDA growth. Less proactive companies lost ground vs. the competition or hung up their hat in one way or another. Our best clients had a few priorities in common:
- SIOP Success: Whether SIOP was used to get ahead of changing global conditions, reduce inventory and free up cash without impacting customer performance, dramatically improve service and lead times to support customer growth, reallocate production among sites to optimize operational performance, or reconfigure supply chains for optimal performance with reduced risk, the best of the best focused attention on this priority. To learn about additional strategies to optimize with SIOP, download our complimentary eBook, SIOP: Creating Predictable Revenue and EBITDA Growth.
- Better Use & Optimization of ERP: Fundamentals came into focus – #1) inventory inaccuracies showed up as financial impacts, #2) lack of optimization of MRP and manufacturing ERP functionality caused negative customer service impacts, manual work overloads, and operational inefficiencies, and #3) lack of predictable revenue and product level forecasts caused shortages, unhappy customers, obsolete and slow moving inventory, and reduced resiliency. As experienced, long-term employees are expected to leave the workforce, our best clients realize they must better utilize ERP systems, plug gaps, and embrace advanced technologies to enable future generations of leaders.
- Innovation: Continuous improvement alone is no longer enough. Radical change and advancement requires innovation and collaborative partnership. New products, completely new manufacturing processes enabled with AI, immediate and predictive supply chain visibility, tech-enabled futures, and utilizing uncommon common sense practices and ideas to revamp supply chains and transform industries are just a few of the priorities.
- Focus on Talent: The future will be won by those who build talent, not hire talent. The best organizations start by embracing future leaders and top talent and by providing opportunities to build and transform talent. Thus, leaders must be a pivotal building block.
Similarly, at LMA Consulting, we aligned with these priorities and focused attention and invested in the following priorities:
- SIOP: Since 80%+ of our clients end up utilizing whatever makes sense of SIOP advancements for their situation, it remains a steadfast focus. We also invested significant time in creating standard work, documenting our proprietary methodologies, creating a SIOP platform, and accelerating success with AI and advanced technologies. We are codifying these advanced insights into a new edition of our SIOP eBook.
- Better Use and Optimization of ERP: We see this topic as going hand-in-hand with every client’s upgrade of planning and supply chain processes and rollout of SIOP and the transformation of their supply chain. Thus, we continue to gain expertise in every popular, modern ERP system with the singular focus on ensuring clients gain practical, bottom-line results. We are excited about our new client-specific training videos, AI-enabled databases, and our ability to gain spectacular results for clients by simply better utilizing an already-existing asset.
- Artificial intelligence: We explored new technologies to optimize internal workflows, developed an enhanced fundamental knowledge base for clients and colleagues with ChatGPT-like capabilities, and stayed on the leading edge of what manufacturers and supply chain organizations would need to know. For example, check out our recent AI and advanced technologies eBook: How AI Powers Smart Supply Chains and Smarter Decisions.
- Innovation: We deliberately engage with several organizations and think tanks to stimulate new ideas, take on tough topics such as AI, quantum computing, geopolitics and critical minerals (with much more than we retained in chemistry classes) to ensure we remain at the top of our game and aware of critical insights required to ensure client success, and learn from our failures. If we had no failures, we would be doing something wrong and not pushing the envelope hard enough. Our goal is to limit the negative impact and keep these situations isolated to what we see as innovative pilots and testing grounds. Keep in mind: Edison had around 1000 failures before developing the incandescent light bulb. A few failures can go a long way especially in the current environment where we see limited appetite for persistence – a quality that has been cornerstone to our success.
- Focus on talent: We commonly help clients assess how to optimize talent, provide education (which is far more expansive than simply training someone where to click in what order), interview potential candidates and partner with their resources to transform their supply chain. Thus, we are forever grateful to our mentors over the years, our educators such as our ASCM colleagues for teaching us how to convey key concepts understandably (shout out to Phil and Kevin), and for our clients and LMA colleagues for their support and acceleration of our continuous learning (shout out to Diane and too many clients to mention). The best learn as they consult, and we strive to do that every day. This reminds me of two of my LMA Advocates and fellow ASCM colleagues, Valerie Ladd, who epitomizes continuous learning and Ellen Kane with her passion for educating and supporting students. Also a shout out to Shannon Reininger for her passion to trying new ideas and excitement for learning new ways to achieve success. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my Mom for giving me the power of persistence and my both of my parents for thinking I could do whatever I set my mind to accomplish. All client gains benefit from these lessons.
Prepared to Thrive in the New Year
We believe there will be more opportunities in the next few years than in any time in history. The prepared innovators will thrive, and the rest will step back. It is no longer “easy” as knowledge has walked out the door, global supply chains reshape, and AI changes the world. The resilient, collaborative, innovative, forward-thinking executives will lead companies that soar to new heights. There is no time to delay. Decide if you will power forward or slowly decline.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Maximizing Performance and Margins with SIOP