Adrian Wood, strategic business development and marketing director with Dassault Systèmes, explains why there's so often a gap between the "perfect" plan and the reality on the shop floor.

Roughly 85% of executives are planning to increase their spending on AI in 2026, with one in five expecting their AI spend to rise by 20% or more.

Many businesses went down the path of homegrown AI solutions in 2025, but they learned quickly that just because a zebra has stripes, that doesn't make it a tiger.

Orchestration represents the next frontier in supply chain digitalization.

Expect more shippers to adopt centralized visibility platforms as they look for practical ways to control cost and performance.

Automation doesn’t magically make us more innovative. In fact, convenience often breeds complacency.

In 2026, planning and execution will be more tightly linked.

If operational strategy is the plan, execution is the playbook. 

Planning and optimization teams must now embed tariff scenario analysis directly into their models, including origin shift, multi-sourcing, redistribution and “what-if tariff rollback” capabilities. 

Problems occur when supply chain processes are run in a silo, disconnected from the organization’s broader objectives.