Industry expert and adviser Bart De Muynck details the results of a new survey on supply chain resilience in times of uncertainty, conducted by SupplyChainBrain in collaboration with Seagull Software.

The survey canvassed supply chain executives about current geopolitical and socioeconomic disruptions. The aim, De Muynck says, was to assess the impact of tariffs, as well as how organizations are using data to achieve better visibility of product throughout the supply chain.

Data availability and quality were major concerns. Having the right intelligence at the right time is crucial to getting ahead of disruptions and predicting trends in demand, De Muynck says.

“If I’m putting such a big bet on data,” he says, “how good is it? How much do I have? Is it high-quality data?

Supply chains today face a level of risk that’s reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. But even before that, companies were being challenged by increasingly high volumes of data, and the difficultly of determining what’s important to focus on. The current state of global trade has shaken a lot of executives out of the complacency they might have adopted when the pandemic faded.

Uncertainties about the level of tariffs are leading to varying degrees of readiness among organizations, De Muynck says. Some are reacting now, while others are adopting a wait-and-see attitude. “The risk is that companies haven’t done enough.”

De Muynck calls data “the unsung hero in resilience” — the basis of making quick decisions on where to source product, and how to move it. But the wrong kind of data “can also be a bad actor in the supply chain. A lot of data is not useful.”

Artificial intelligence can help, he says, but companies must also pay attention to the human factor, by engaging in the training and upskilling that prepares people for new roles in the supply chain in an age of automation.