The Autonomous Era Is Here: What Supply Chain Leaders Need to Do Next

Speaker A: Welcome to Gartner thinkcast. I'm Alexis Wehranga. Today we're featuring a preview of the opening keynote from the 2026 Gartner supply chain Symposium Expo as delivered in Orlando, Florida. In this keynote, Gartner Senior Director Analyst Lindsey Azeem explores what we call the autonomous business era and why supply chain leaders are navigating a pivotal moment of change. You'll hear why success isn't about implementing AI first, fastest, or even best. It's about preparing your supply chain to compete in a world where people, agents and machines work together to drive new levels of agility, resilience, and value. Now, here's Lindsey Azim.

Speaker B: I cannot tell you how genuinely excited I, um, am to be up here, to be in Orlando, to be, uh, in front of all of you. Today, I see a room full of supply chain leaders that have one thing in common. You're asked to show up day in and day out to meet the moment. And let's be honest, showing up in 2026 is not easy. We're seeing high tensions in the Middle East. We're seeing rising oil prices, and we're seeing a critical logistics artery under threat. In spite of that, we still keep a constant flow of materials and products moving. Under deadlines and under expectations that only seem to grow. We keep showing up. And while we're managing the demands that are right in front of us, something much bigger is unfolding. This isn't just a change you see in your roadmap. We are actually turning onto an entirely different road with technologies and capabilities that we've never had before. And the headlines won't let us forget it. AI is transforming the future of business. AI helps doctors diagnose and treat diseases. AI changes how Hollywood scripts and teachers grade. We certainly hear a lot about AI but let's talk about the realities we see on the ground. First, the investments organizations are throwing big budgets at. AI supply chain alone spent an average of $24 million on AI in 2025. More than a third of AI investments went over budget. And most organizations don't expect to see results for at least a year after deployment. Of course, that doesn't let us off the hook. We're still under pressure to take costs out, and it can all feel pretty overwhelming. But do you know what else it feels like? It feels familiar. This is just what it feels like at the beginning of a new business era. Emerging technology is powerful enough to reshape how business gets done. But we haven't yet redesigned how our business operates. Market bubbles form productivity Gaps emerge and institutional lag sets in. And we've all seen these patterns before. In the early 2000s, we were also navigating global shocks and scenario planning on the implications of China's entry into the World Trade Organization. In watching the dot com bubble burst, how many of you debated on whether Amazon was ever going to turn a profit? Do you remember when it was a bookstore? Despite all that chaos, a new era still emerged. It was called the E commerce era. New, uh, sales channels opened and every organization had to rethink their playbook. What we know today is we adapted, we moved forward. We emerged on the other side stronger than we were before. The way we do business today is, would have terrified us in 2003. But here we are, coffee in one hand, little handheld computer in the other, and we're navigating all with, navigating it all with confidence. Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And we are definitely rhyming this time. AI is the catalyst. Supply chain leaders say changes in ways of working because of AI is the most influential driver redefining our strategies over the next two years. And the narrative should sound familiar. An AI bubble. The gaps between AI and productivity and how far our institutions are lagging behind in governing this new technology. Here's the thing. The future isn't coming. It's already here. But we still have operations to run, deadlines to meet, and products to get to customers. And that's what makes this moment so challenging. We're juggling two timelines at once. Delivering today while knowing we need to prepare for what's next. Gartner calls this next era the Autonomous business era. This is that reset moment. Eight in 10 executives expect autonomous business to be the dominant form of business by 2030. Now I want to get on the same page about what autonomous business is. Autonomous business goes beyond traditional automation. It's a strategy that uses self improving technologies so AI agents, virtual assistants and robots to make decisions and take action. New types of value are created as both people and machines gain, uh, greater autonomy. Now, this isn't just a change in how we do things. It's a change in who does what. And uh, the who is becoming a mix of people and machines working both independently and together. Now, for all of us in this room who make, move and sell physical products, this is a very big deal. It's a major shift in how we run and resource our supply chains. For marketing and finance. Autonomy often means automating digital workflows, which of course comes with its own challenges. But in supply chain, our reality is different. Our work is rooted in the physical movement of raw materials, boxes and pallets of across complex networks. This physical complexity is our greatest challenge. It's not just a software update. It's an ongoing journey of harmonizing people, assets and AI agents. But this is also our greatest opportunity. All organizations will struggle to adapt to the autonomous business era. Those that adapt will be well positioned to lead. So what does autonomous business actually look like for supply chain? Let's start with our physical assets, our factories, warehouses, distribution centers and eventually our fleets. These environments will likely be machine dominated, lights out or nearly lights out. With autonomous robots making, moving and orchestrating products across the network. People will supervise systems, guide decisions and manage exceptions. Driving demand will be an ecosystem of customers interacting directly with the manufacturing and fulfillment nodes. But some customers will be humans and some customers will be machines. Machines will be placing orders, adjusting demand signals and replenishing inventory. The network will be connected by dynamic self evolving workflows. Humans and machines now respond to disruptions in real time, balancing trade offs and re optimizing plans as conditions change. And the entire supply chain will be an augmented workforce. A deliberate mix of people, agents and robots working together with precision. This sounds like a vision of the distant future, but we're already seeing it take shape. Today, Pepsi launched new facilities complete with robot uh, travel paths and layouts designed to accommodate new AI driven workflows. Amazon has a robot with a sense of touch. It can detect whether it needs to apply more or less pressure during packing. AstraZeneca operates what it calls a uh, self healing supply chain built to continuously detect issues and self correct. These are just a few examples, but momentum is building. Gartner predicts that by 2031, 60% of supply chain disruptions will be resolved without human intervention. Of course, not all supply chains will fulfill this vision over the next five years. And not every business unit or product will need to. But every business will be impacted. And no matter where you are on this journey, now is the time to start preparing. Because here's what we're seeing. If you're a supplier, three in five of your customers believe they should be making buying decisions today. Based on your ability to build autonomous capabilities in about 2/3 of the of your customers so that they prefer a rep free experience. Your customers want seamless, easy transactions. For those of you serving end customers, the shift is just as big. About 65% of your peers say that they're already interacting with machine customers. So if you aren't already, you'll soon be taking orders from machine customers or negotiating with machine suppliers. Everything is moving really fast. Let's slow down for a minute. I want to take you out of this room. I want to take you to my hometown

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Speaker B: Now, I grew up in a quiet town on the coast of Massachusetts. When I was a kid, we'd go to the beach all the time, even though it was always windy and it was always cold. My dad would take my brother and I to fly kites by the water and he'd say, no matter how high the kite flies, it's your feet on the ground, in your grip on the line that keeps it steady and lets it fly higher. I never forgot those words, even to this day, and I'm thinking about them again as I share this vision of the future with you. Because no matter how far ahead we look, we need to keep our feet firmly on the ground, always balancing our ambitions for the future with the realities we face today and right now. The headwinds are strong, costs are going up, and geopolitical tensions are a constant. We know we can't control the wind, but we can control the line. We've done it before and we're going to do it again. The dilemma we're facing is the same kind of dilemma that we faced 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Anytime we were up against the latest brand new technology that absolutely rocked our business, it feels new. It's not. Success in this moment for CSEOS is not about implementing AI first, fastest or best. Success is preparing your supply chain to compete in the autonomous business era. In other words, we don't have to fly the highest. We need to keep the kite in the air no matter how the wind is blowing. We do that by effectively managing the tension in the line, knowing how much line to let out so the kite flies higher, when to hold steady, and when to pull back. My goal for today is to help you control the line by focusing on three key invest in autonomous ready operations, build autonomous ready intelligence, and develop an autonomous ready workforce. Let's start with how we invest in autonomous ready operations. Now, there's a paradox at Play. New technologies are designed to transform our operations and help our organizations get future ready. At the same time, there's a lot of pressure to show results and deliver value right away. If we look at the introduction of, uh, electricity in manufacturing, we saw the same exact thing early on. People didn't see any additional value because they basically just swapped out water for electricity. Factories were still designed around a central shaft or a single power source, where machines were crammed together in multi story buildings. This is the 19th century equivalent of buying a multimillion dollar AI planning platform and exporting all of the data to run it in Excel. Anyways. The real breakthrough happened when leaders reimagined what was possible. They were no longer constrained by a central power source. Once they realized this fundamental difference, everything changed. Factories were redesigned as single story layouts, and this paved the way for the assembly line and unlocked levels of efficiency that were unimaginable before. The value didn't come from the new technology, it came from the new mindset. We've spent years running our supply chains with an automation mindset, breaking down every single task so that can be controlled, predetermined, and ultimately automated. All with the goal of driving efficiency and moving faster. It got us this far, but it won't get us to where we need to go next. And Executives recognize this too. 77% of CEOs at supply chain centric organizations don't believe their current operating models are enough to succeed in an AI driven era. Here's the thing. If we keep operating with this same mindset, we'll only ever see incremental gains a little faster here, a little bit more efficient over there. To get transformational value out of transformational technology, we have to think differently. Supply chain is not a collection of siloed tasks and dependencies. In fact, even the term supply chain is problematic. It suggests a linear rigid sequence. And as we know, supply chain is a continuous flow of interconnected decisions we need to redesign for a new paradigm. I'm talking about the shift from an automation mindset to what we call an autonomous mindset. It's a shift away from thinking about supply chains as a sequence of tasks, tasks that are governed by a predetermined set of rules and fueled by data, where the goal is greater efficiency in a single linear process. The autonomous mindset is something entirely new. It's not linear. The decisions are interconnected, done simultaneously and with guardrails that rely on data and judgment. The outcome is a level of agility you could never get with automation alone. This is where Real transformation happens. The automation mindset works when the world is stable. The autonomous mindset works because it isn't. Of course, this shift doesn't happen overnight. And I know that puts cseos in a tough spot because we all feel the pressure from our CEOs and CFOs to deliver ROI and cost savings right now. And at the same time, I've just told you that you need to start building an autonomous supply chain and this will take years. So going forward, I want you to embrace an autonomous mindset by running on two parallel paths. The first path is called exploitation. Using what we have and making it better. Optimizing AI technology by bolting it on to our current processes to get whatever savings we can today. Which is critical because only one in five CSCOs feel they can hit their cost targets over the next six months. Organizations are automating freight scheduling. They're using, uh, real time tracking to reroute shipments when there's a disruption. Think about all that's going on in the Strait of Hormuz today. This is really valuable. And in this environment, exploitation makes sense. We're pulling the line of that kite in tighter to address our immediate realities on the ground. And Nokia is putting this into practice. They launched a digital twin platform to automate customs duty calculations and monitor global tariffs. So their risk team can now run hundreds of what if scenarios, analyzing different combinations of countries of origin and export to predict the financial impact of different trade policies. This is a great example of exploitation, but this is usually where we stop. Think about exploitation as the final act of the digital era. To truly unlock the potential of AI, we need to simultaneously walk a second path. Exploration. Exploration is how you move your supply chain into the autonomous era. We reimagine how work gets done and design new ways of operating that are only possible because of AI. Exploration is about letting out more line on the kite so your organization can catch higher, more powerful gusts of wind. I'm, um, talking about entirely new value propositions, new revenue streams and new ways to compete. Here's how I want you to think about the difference between these two paths. When we focus on exploitation, we're asking, what value will AI deliver now? But when we shift to an exploration mindset, uh, when we shift to exploration, we are really asking, what outcome in 2030 would make today's AI investment worthwhile? This is the question that leading organizations are answering, and Unilever is one of them. They made a bold investment to launch an AI driven factory to consumer model in China at the center is an AI management system that brings together agents, genai and digital tools. Nearly 120 robots automate 90% of logistics operations out of that warehouse. Unilever created a touchless end to end logistics system that fulfills orders as soon as the product is made. Their operational costs were reduced by 24%, forecast accuracy improved by 39% and delivery cycles were shortened by 75%. Unilever placed an exploration bet on a single distribution center and it paid off and they're now scaling this direct to consumer model globally. Now how you divide your resources between exploitation and exploration depends on your organization, and it depends on your industry. If you're just getting started, it's okay to lean into exploitation. But if you're in more mature industries or have a higher risk appetite, it's worth dedicating more to exploration and taking bigger bets on the future. But here's the takeaway. Neither path can be zero. They can be split 80, 20, but neither is zero. You still need to create value today, and you need to invest something in the autonomous business you'll be operating tomorrow.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this latest episode of Thinkcast. That was Gartner Senior Director Analyst Lindsey Azeem. To learn more about this topic and to register for a Gartner conference near you, follow the links in the description for more episodes like this. Be sure to subscribe and don't forget to leave a review, drop a comment and share with a colleague so neither of you will miss it.