Manifest 2026 in Las Vegas felt different. One sharp friend of mine (Florent Guillet-Caillot) referred to it as a “a gigantic beehive, full of energy and enthusiasm for what the future holds.” And that was before the extra buzz generated with the networking happy hours that were prevalent amongst all the friendly folks in attendance.
I enjoyed the opportunity to connect with hundreds of colleagues and friends, lead a wonderful panel discussion, and conduct more than twenty interviews with leaders from across the supply chain ecosystem: operators, technologists, investors, educators, journalists, entrepreneurs and analysts.
And after all those conversations, several observations became clear to me. None are necessarily new, but they certainly represented a doubling and tripling down of major themes across the global supply chain industry.
AI has moved from hype to execution
A couple of years ago, many conversations about AI in supply chain were still theoretical. At Manifest 2026, that wasn’t the case. In fact, my conversations in Las Vegas only added to my belief that those leaders that fail to take advantage of what has largely become the AI imperative…well, the costs to your competitive advantage have continued to rise dramatically.
In my conversation with Aadil Kazmi, Head of AI at Infios, he emphasized that the AI conversation has long shifted toward execution. Results are to be expected now; not demos and theoreticals.
One of the key points he raised was the power of unified data models. When order management, warehouse management, and transportation systems operate on the same foundation, organizations can actually act on intelligence rather than spending months stitching together fragmented datasets.
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