What occurs when a long time of provide chain planning collide with AI, volatility, and a world that now not strikes at a predictable tempo?
That query sat on the coronary heart of my dialog with Piet Buycka serial entrepreneur whose profession spans early optimization engines, cloud-era planning methods, and now AI-driven choice environments. Talking from Antwerp simply days earlier than the vacations, Piet introduced a relaxed, grounded perspective formed by years inside organizations working below actual industrial stress. His journey consists of constructing Garvis, an AI-native planning platform later acquired by Logilitywhich itself turned a part of Aptean. That arc alone tells a narrative about consolidation, scale, and the place trendy planning is heading.
We hung out unpacking concepts from Piet’s e book, AI Compass for Provide Chain Leaderssignificantly his view that planning drifted too far into summary numbers and away from real-world context. Lengthy earlier than AI turned a boardroom obsession, he noticed how centralized fashions created distance between selections and actuality. When disruption arrives, whether or not by means of pandemics, tariffs, or geopolitical rigidity, that distance turns into pricey. Piet shared vivid examples of how sluggish, spreadsheet-heavy processes fail exactly when pace and readability matter most.
One thread that saved resurfacing was knowledge. Many leaders imagine their knowledge is “adequate” till volatility exposes blind spots. Piet pushed the dialog additional, explaining that AI’s worth goes past crunching clear datasets. It may well transfer understanding throughout silos, floor the explanations behind selections, and make context seen with out limitless conferences. That concept of explainable, collaborative AI got here up repeatedly, particularly as a counterpoint to opaque automation that creates confidence with out understanding.
We additionally tackled the human aspect. There’s nervousness about abilities erosion and the disappearance of entry-level roles, however Piet’s view was extra nuanced. AI shifts the place time and vitality go, away from gathering data and towards judgment, equity, and accountability. In his eyes, the actual problem for leaders is choosing the proper scope. Tasks which can be too small fade into irrelevance, whereas these which can be too large stall below their very own weight.
As we seemed forward, Piet mirrored on how management itself might change as knowledge turns into accessible to everybody. Authority primarily based on intuition alone turns into more durable to defend when assumptions are seen. The leaders who thrive shall be those that can clarify route clearly, join knowledge to goal, and convey individuals with them.
So, after listening to how planning, AI, and management are converging in actual organizations at this time, how do you see the steadiness between human judgment and machine intelligence taking part in out in your individual world, and are we actually prepared for what that shift calls for?
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