Most operating models still assume a human at every decision point and software that waits to be told. That assumption is breaking. I work on what replaces it - how supply chains, physical operations, business architecture and AI are redesigned together.
Who decides, at what speed, with what information - the design of the loop itself, not the org chart around it.
Two decades in global supply chains across consumer goods, industrial, life sciences and soft commodities. The rules here were paid for on real shop floors.
Agentic AI, orchestration and decision systems - where they belong in an operating model, and where they only add cost.
Numbered heuristics for operations, one page each: the problem, why it is hard, the rule, a test with a real case and a maxim.
All heuristicsA problem optimised is a problem kept.
Improvement programmes make issues cheaper and keep them alive. An ideality mindset actually asks what must be true for the problem not to exist.
A company is never ready. A loop is, or it isn’t.
Supply chain and operations AI readiness tends to score the wrong item. The decision loop determines whether it’s AI-ready.
Articles, essays and notebook chapters on supply chain orchestration, AI readiness and the systems that run physical operations, newest first, including pieces published on Automatiqa Lab and LinkedIn.
All insightsThe Variety Map is grounded in two axes and a square. Every decision loop in an operating model should have one point on it.
Improvement programmes make issues cheaper and keep them alive. An ideality mindset actually asks what must be true for the problem not to exist.
A method for designing operating models: place each decision loop on a two-axis map to measure the variety it has or can absorb.
After some years in this industry, I've discovered the gap is never in the data.
Three appearances in 2026: a logistics panel at the SCTA Forum in Montreux, an expert panel for CIPS Denmark, and The Invisible Chain in Zurich, which he co-hosted.
All events
Panel 4 - From Bottlenecks to Flow: Rethinking Coffee Logistics
I joined the logistics panel at the Swiss Coffee Trade Association's 17th Forum in Montreux with Dany Barkha of Sucafina, José Luis Pérez of Commodity Supplies AG, Mirja Nibbe of CMA CGM and Christian Jacob Hansen of the Global Maritime Forum, moderated by Dean Sanders of Etymos. The question was how coffee moves beyond reactive crisis management to connected flow across ports, shipping, data and forecasting.
The Expert Q&A Panel - CIPS Denmark webinar
I joined the expert panel at the CIPS Denmark webinar with Elisabeth Schlag-Lawrence of CatalystProcurement and Dr. Charlotte de Brabandt of ZF Group. After start-ups showcased their AI tools for negotiation preparation, we stress-tested them with our own questions, then took the audience's live.
The rules and arguments here are the practitioner's side. The tools that test them - agents, forecasting harnesses, document control, an orchestration kernel - are built in public at Automatiqa Lab, a separate lab I founded for exactly that.
The structural argument is the Intelligent Orchestration Manifesto.
New writing, when it lands
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