What are supply chain leaders talking about at CHAINge 2026?
In this Supply Chain Byte live from CHAINge 2026 (the Association of Supply Chain Management’s Showcase Conference) in Long Beach, CA, Lisa Anderson and Diane Garcia share one of their key takeaways from the conference: the growing importance of SIOP (Sales Inventory and Operations Planning) – and the need for companies to continue maturing their SIOP processes.
As complexity and volatility increase, combining AI with SIOP is becoming increasingly important for predictability and better decision-making. But AI alone is not the answer. Companies need the right framework, meaningful metrics, reliable data and a strong SIOP process to turn information into action.
The opportunity is to move from complexity to clarity by building an AI-enabled SIOP process that supports better decisions, stronger performance and profitable growth.
CHAINge provided great opportunities for learning, networking, and collaboration. A few themes that arose constantly include:
- AI: Artificial intelligence continues to be the hot topic of discussion. There are countless ways that AI can be utilized in manufacturing, logistics and supply chain. AI-enabled supply chains are no longer the trend of the future. They are required to simply sustain customer service, optimize inventory levels, and maximize margins.
- Geopolitics: Geopolitics has been increasing in criticality over the last several years as wars arose in Asia and the Middle East, China restricts rare earth minerals for the rest of the world, chokepoints are increasingly called out (Panama Canal, Suez Canal etc.), the tariff impact, and the world evolves with more focus on the Americas with access to Greenland vs China, Russia, and Iran. Thus, supply chains must become forward-looking.
- Supply chain resilience: You must be hiding under a rock if you aren’t focused on supply chain resilience as it has become an assumption. One of the keynote panels was centered on supply chain resilience and planning for supply chains that never stabilize. Our favorite line was from complexity to clarity.
- Workforce transformation: Not surprisingly, ASCM also emphasized the importance of transforming your workforce to create sustainability, scalability, and serviceability. Educating, training, and mentoring your teams is essential to success.
While these themes were discussed, we took away additional evidence for the need and power of AI-enabled SIOP. We have found that our most successful clients utilize AI-enabled SIOP to proactively prepare and make critical business decisions to best navigate changing business conditions – and, most importantly, create new opportunities from them. For example, as companies see business increase and capacity runs starts to look tight into the future, they can utilize this process to determine which product groups will be required, whether you should look for additional offload suppliers, which capital equipment to purchase, and how to reallocate production throughout your network. Thus, Finance can pinpoint where to focus scarce resources to maximize margins while scaling to meet customer needs with the optimal approach. By leveraging AI with the process, changing conditions are incorporated immediately, new process improvements impact the predicted run rates and likely upgrades and/or customer opportunities are incorporated.
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Maximizing Performance & Margins with SIOP