2027 Agenda

• Moving from AI that recommends to agents that execute: which decisions were handed over first, and why
• Authority limits, escalation rules and audit trails that made leaders comfortable
• How planner and buyer roles changed once agents drafted the first version
• Failure modes seen in production and how they were caught
• Measuring decision quality, not just decision speed

Mattel owns much of its manufacturing and set out to ensure no single country would account for more than about a quarter of production by 2027. With that target year here, Roberto Isaias talks through what diversification cost and what it bought.

• The decision behind the target, and how the footprint across China, Southeast Asia and Mexico was rebalanced to meet it
• Sequencing the shift: qualification, tooling and ramp-up in new plants
• The real cost of the transition: margin drag, duplicated capacity and new-plant learning curves
• Dual-sourcing discipline: which products earn two homes and which don’t
• What owning manufacturing made possible when trade rules moved, and what he’d do differently

• When owned networks, dedicated 3PL, shared warehousing and on-demand space each earn their place
• Ocean and truckload contracting when a capacity glut forecast to peak in 2027 meets chokepoint disruption
• Designing for surge and slack: import pull-forwards, tariff timing and demand swings
• Contract structures that flex, and the service risks that come with them
• How automation changes the build-versus-partner math

• Labor availability is tightening in food processing, agriculture, building materials and transportation, including through stricter immigration enforcement
• Which levers still work when wage increases and overtime run out: targeted automation, cross-training and site selection
• Retention as a capacity strategy: first-90-day attrition and career paths
• Workforce compliance without disrupting operations
• Planning capacity when labor is the binding constraint

Heiko Gerling leads Danone’s operations across the Americas, spanning manufacturing, logistics, customer service, procurement, S&OP, quality and food safety. With a portfolio weighted toward protein, gut health and lower-sugar nutrition, he explains how operations keeps pace when consumer demand moves faster than the capacity plan.

• Reading a structural demand shift early: separating a lasting move toward protein and gut health, including GLP-1-driven changes in what consumers buy, from a passing trend
• When to commit capacity: line conversions, co-manufacturing and new capex, and the planning signals that trigger each
• Running one integrated S&OP across manufacturing, logistics, procurement and customer service
• Planning short-shelf-life, cold-chain products when the mix moves quickly
• Ramping new products at speed without compromising quality and food safety

• Rebuilding landed-cost models as the legal basis for tariffs moved from IEEPA to Section 122 to Section 301
• Bringing duty scenarios into the weekly S&OP and IBP cadence rather than a quarterly finance exercise
• Pricing, sourcing and inventory levers: who decides, how fast and on what data
• Timing plays, such as pre-buys and inventory positioning, that paid off and those that didn’t
• Keeping commercial teams aligned when the cost base moves mid-quarter

• What triggered the redesign: cost, a shifting sourcing map, channel mix or an aging footprint
• Deciding which sites to close, combine, expand or keep, and the service-versus-cost trade-offs behind each call
• Sequencing the transition so customers and stores don’t feel it: inventory moves, cutover timing and contingency capacity
• Bringing people with you: workforce transitions, community relationships and retaining key talent through closures
• Measuring whether it worked: cost-to-serve, service levels and resilience 12 months on

• More than half of supply chain leaders expect agentic AI to reduce entry-level hiring, and Gartner warns those who paused will pay a premium later
• Where tomorrow’s planners and buyers learn judgment if agents do the entry-level work
• Redesigned early-career roles, rotations and apprenticeships that are working
• University and community-college partnerships that feed the pipeline
• Making the case to the CFO: pipeline cost today versus premium hiring tomorrow

• Why 2026’s tariff resets, chokepoint closures and supply allocation broke safety-stock policies built on historical variability
• Segmenting buffers by risk type (policy, logistics and supply allocation), not just demand variability
• Where to hold the buffer: raw materials, work-in-process, finished goods or forward positions, and what each costs
• Getting finance to price resilience inventory as insurance rather than waste
• What multi-echelon planning and AI tools changed about the answer, and what they didn’t

• Where the Hormuz closure actually hit: fuel and freight surcharges, petrochemical feedstocks and resins, fertilizer
• Routing and inventory strategies when two chokepoints are compromised at once
• Treating energy as a structural input to sourcing and network decisions, not a surcharge
• Scenario triggers peers monitor, and the decisions pre-agreed for each
• Planning for reopening without being caught long on the wrong assumptions

Lowe’s serves two very different customers from one network: the Pro who needs a full flatbed on a jobsite first thing in the morning, and the DIY customer shopping in store and online. Margi Vagell explains how the network is built to run on both clocks.

• Why Pro and DIY run on different clocks: jobsite delivery windows and flatbed loads versusstore replenishment and parcel
• Merging import and transload operations to pull time out of the end-to-end flow
• Standards before automation: getting the process right before the technology goes in
• What a growing Pro business, including recent acquisitions, asks of the network
• From merchant to supply chain leader: leading operators through relationships

• What prompted the redesign: acquisitions, a new operating model, cost pressure or a shift in strategy
• Drawing decision rights between global, regional and business-unit teams, and what moved where
• Spans, layers and role design when planning, procurement and logistics work is increasingly automated
• Making the new structure stick: leadership appointments, shared KPIs and incentives that reward the whole chain
• What they would design differently, and the early signals that the structure was or wasn’t working