PROCUREMENT STRATEGY
Identifying failures early reduces downtime, employee fatigue and brings value to partnerships. It is impossible to predict every disruption, but organisations can create enough optionality and comfort across a partnership within the network that a disruption becomes manageable rather than catastrophic.
“ A resilient supply chain is not necessarily the lowest-cost network on paper. It is the network that can continue serving customers when conditions change unexpectedly,” says Joe Oliaro, Strategic Real Estate & Business Development Executive at Wagner Logistics.
The right stock, in the right place When it comes to inventory, Joe explains that the conversation has evolved from‘ how little inventory can we carry?’ to‘ where should we strategically carry inventory’.“ Many organisations learned during the pandemic that inventory is not simply a cost; it is also an insurance policy. The challenge is determining where inventory creates value and where it creates waste,” he says.
“ The objective is not maximum inventory or minimum inventory, it is the right inventory in the right location.”
Where Joe focuses on where to hold inventory, Anand extends the same logic upstream, to knowing what’ s coming before it disrupts that inventory in the first place. For Anand, that means visibility that goes beyond Tier 1 suppliers entirely.
“No company has perfect visibility into every node of a global supply chain”
Anand Srinivasan Chief Strategy Officer o9 Solutions
66 September 2026