Supply Chain Pioneers · 2026-06-03 · 19 min
Live from the Gartner supply chain conference, host Ulf Venne speaks with two guests in separate segments. David Shillingford shares what stands out this year versus last: a shift from broad AI talk to the “so what” and “how,” focusing on autonomy, the autonomous ecosystem, and the need for pristine data; he also discusses physical automation driven by regionalization, reshoring, and workforce challenges, and argues supply chain is firmly a board-level issue amid geopolitics and extreme weather. Austin Myers of Certifical explains how manual, document-heavy vendor onboarding and insurance compliance create inefficiencies and risk, and describes Certifical’s real-time verification and monitoring of insurance data to automate compliance year-round; he notes issues like fake documents and emphasizes consolidation to a single source of truth, system understanding, and learning how to improve “tomorrow” beyond AI hype.
Lucy Pitcher talks Supply Chain: Women, Visibility, and Communication56 / 100Howard Walfield talks Supply Chain: AI Hype, Resilience, and TrustNick Gospodinov talks Supply Chain: Indiana Jones, Communication, and AIScott Luton talks Supply Chain: Conferences, Storytelling and Supply Chain NowNishith Rastogi talks Supply Chain: AI, DIY, and Logistics