Conscious Supply Chain: Issue 01

Vol. 1 – The Gutfeeling of the Order

Let’s talk about one of the weirdest things I’ve seen over and over again in supply chain.

The purchase order.

Not the document itself - but the way its made.

It’s wild how many brands, even the big ones, are still figuring out their POs with a combination of spreadsheet averages, last-minute sales guesses, and good old-fashioned vibes.

The first time I saw this up close was years ago while working with a high-stakes manufacturer. I expected precision – BOMs, military-grade planning, rigorous systems. What I got was Excel, instincts, and a lot of last-minute scrambling.

Nope. Gut feel.

More than half the time the answer is some version of this:

“We average out the forecast. Then we order when stock gets low. And if we think demand’s going up, we bump the quantity.”

That kind of works – until it doesn’t.

Add another warehouse. Or more SKUs. Or promos. Or channel shifts. Or co-mans. Or Suppliers.

Suddenly that fuzzy logic creates real risk.

You get stock outs on your bestsellers and pallets of deadweight just sitting in a 3PL.

But there’s a deeper reason this keeps happening.

Most brands don’t actually plan – they just react.

Their systems aren’t broken – they were never built to handle multi-layer uncertainty across co-mans, warehouses, and raw materials.

Fixing this isn’t about better spreadsheets – it’s about creating a shared source of truth across the entire supply network, one that updates in real-time and ties every PO back to a plan.

The best supply chains aren’t locally optimized – they’re globally coordinated across every partner, from PO to raw material.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Because your manufacturer doesn’t trust your signal, they hedge with their own safety stock.

So does their raw material supplier.

Everyone's playing defense, and now every layer of the supply chain is holding more than they should. Containers half full. Shelves overflowing. No one’s really sure what’s coming next.

And in the end, the cost rolls all the way down to the customer.

This is the bullwhip effect. And it's still one of the biggest unsolved problems in supply chain.

We’re finally reaching a point where that coordination is possible – not through dashboards or consultants, but intelligent systems that act on their own.

This isn’t just a people problem. It’s a system problem – and it’s been waiting for a new kind of solution.

AI agents that coordinate decisions across your entire supply stack – in real time.

Not just forecasting – but issuing POs, adapting to ETA changes, rebalancing stock across warehouses, and syncing with suppliers – all without manual follow-up.

This newsletter is your step-by-step playbook – from gut-feel guesses to AI-coordinated supply chains.

Next week: we start with S&OP – and how the best operators use it to align demand and supply before the distortion starts.

More soon

-Leon