The clearest message for supply chain leaders is this: autonomous, AI-native supply chains are moving from vision to real-world execution, a shift that came through clearly at the 2026 Gartner® Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo™, held May 18–20 in Barcelona, Spain. The conversation has moved beyond AI as a concept and toward how to make it deliver measurable value in daily operations.
That theme showed up across the event’s major focus areas, including AI and emerging technologies, cost optimization, risk and resilience, talent, organization and culture, and transformation. In sessions and side conversations, leaders kept returning to the same challenge: how to make faster, better decisions, protect margins, manage risk, and simplify work instead of adding complexity.
At Blue Yonder, we see those needs every day. Leaders need connected planning and execution, a common data cloud, and a multi-enterprise, multi-tier network ecosystem. They also need scalable AI that helps people, AI agents, and automation work together more effectively.
Here are three takeaways that stood out most in our view.
1. Agentic AI is moving from promise to practical execution
Agentic AI was one of the biggest topics in Barcelona, but the conversation was notably grounded. Leaders were less interested in hype and more focused on where AI can improve real decisions inside real workflows.
We think that aligned with Gartner’s framing of AI and emerging technologies, which centered on ROI, scaling what works, and knowing where to pull back. Across the event, leaders pointed to the same barriers: incomplete data, weak governance, outdated workflows, and limited alignment across functions. Many organizations have already tested AI in isolated use cases. The next step is to embed it into workflows that improve speed, precision, and business outcomes across the supply chain.
That requires more than adding AI to existing processes. Teams need to understand how decisions move across functions, where delays occur, and which actions can be automated with the right oversight. They also need the right architecture to support connected decisions across the network.
Gabriel Werner, VP Supply Chain Advisory, Blue Yonder, addressed that directly in the CSCO boardroom discussion, “From algorithms to EBITDA: Architecting AI in supply chains.” The discussion focused on questions leaders are now asking more urgently: how to connect AI investments to financial outcomes, which use cases are creating real value, and what foundation is required to scale.
As the AI company for supply chain, we believe AI creates the most value when it works across planning, execution, and returns. It needs timely data, interoperable workflows, and the ability to connect partners, surface issues early, and support proactive orchestration.
The takeaway: Agentic AI can improve supply chain performance, but only when organizations pair it with the right data, governance, architecture, and decision design.
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2. Human roles are evolving toward strategic oversight
Another clear theme was the changing role of supply chain teams. The message was consistent: AI will change how work gets done, but it will not reduce the need for experienced people. In many cases, it raises the value of their judgment.
Too many teams still spend time reconciling data, managing exceptions manually, and chasing updates across disconnected systems. That slows decisions and limits strategic impact. When AI helps monitor signals, identify exceptions, and recommend actions, people can spend more time weighing trade-offs, shaping strategy, and focusing on business outcomes.
That shift does not happen automatically. Leaders need clearer operating models, stronger decision rights, and trust in AI-supported decisions. Explainability, consistency, and auditability all matter if organizations want broader adoption.
The Wella Xpo Stage session, “Future planning with IBP at Wella,” offered a practical example. Wella shared how it is using Integrated Business Planning to support more sustainable, agile growth. Just as important, the session reinforced a point heard throughout the week: complete, high-quality data is essential to transformation. Wella also highlighted a challenge many leaders know well, transforming planning while continuing to run the business in parallel.
This is why unified planning matters. Teams cannot make strong decisions when each function works from a different version of the truth. They need connected data, aligned workflows, and stronger collaboration across internal teams and external partners.
Blue Yonder helps enable that with unified planning, multi-tier collaboration, and advanced execution. With stronger visibility across the supply chain, including network partners, organizations can align plans and actions in real time and free teams to focus on higher-value work.
The takeaway: AI elevates human roles, but leaders still need to redesign processes, responsibilities, and decision rights to capture the value.
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3. Cost, risk, and resilience are now board-level priorities
If one challenge connected nearly every conversation in Barcelona, it was the need to balance cost, risk, and resilience.
Shirell James, VP Supply Chain Advisory, Blue Yonder, addressed that tension in the executive roundtable, “Quantifying the unquantifiable: Supply chain risk and resilience.” The discussion focused on: can we calculate the true cost of supply chain risk, and can we make that case compellingly at board level?
The session revealed a striking consensus, most organisations are still operating reactively, lack a formalised framework for quantifying risk cost, and struggle to align finance, procurement, operations, and commercial teams around a common risk language. Four cost levers emerged as the foundation for any quantification approach: inventory buffers, capacity enablement, dual-sourcing premiums, and the cost of activating a risk response; with the last being the hardest to capture and the most frequently absorbed invisibly across functions.
Beyond quantification, the conversation surfaced a deeper challenge: sustaining investment in resilience when organisational "pain memory" fades. COVID-era inventory decisions, justified at great cost, are now being cut under EBIT pressure, often without consulting risk or supply chain teams. Participants also pushed back on the assumption that supply chain risk is primarily a logistics problem; energy inflation, raw material escalation, and margin erosion were described as existential threats that don't respond to dual sourcing or safety stock. The roundtable concluded that sustainable resilience requires a shift from reactive heroics to embedded governance with pre-costed scenario playbooks, cross-enterprise risk ownership, and board-ready narratives that connect resilience to competitive survival and share price, not just cost avoidance.
At the Carlsberg main stage session, “From cost insights to network intelligence,” Edgars Berzins and Shirell James walked through how Carlsberg turned cost pressure into a structured, data-driven program. Facing year-on-year logistics cost growth and decisions being made without cost visibility, Carlsberg launched a Cost-to-Deliver initiative that defined service elements, built a clean data foundation, and shifted mindset from reactive spend control to proactive cost management. The results were concrete: 8% global logistics cost savings, 40% CO₂ reduction on selected flows, and a country rollout cycle of four to six months across 10+ markets.
But the session made clear that Cost-to-Deliver is only the first chapter. Cost-to-Deliver represents roughly one-third of the total prize; the remaining two-thirds sits in Cost-to-Serve and COGS, much of which is driven by unpredictable disruption. The path forward runs from transparency through diagnostic and predictive capability to prescriptive and ultimately autonomous decision-making, enabled by AI-powered supply chain orchestration (powered by the Blue Yonder Network). For companies that want to move beyond logistics optimisation and start reducing total cost across the network, that maturity curve is the roadmap.
The takeaway: leaders cannot treat cost and risk as separate decisions. They need connected intelligence that helps them optimize both.
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How supply chain leaders can move forward
The 2026 Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo showed that the autonomous supply chain conversation has matured. Leaders are no longer asking whether AI matters. They are asking how to operationalize it with the right data, workflows, governance, architecture, and people.
The path forward starts with practical questions:
- Which decisions create the most value when made faster?
- Where do disconnected systems slow down action?
- Which workflows need redesign before AI can scale?
- How should human oversight evolve as autonomy increases?
- How can cost, service, and risk decisions connect across the network?
These questions help organizations move from experimentation to execution. They also point to the capabilities that matter most: unified planning, multi-tier collaboration, advanced execution, scalable AI, and a common data cloud. Companies can now tackle all of their supply chain challenges with the only scalable, end-to-end platform that leverages a common data cloud, integrated AI insights and ML forecasting.
At Blue Yonder, we help supply chain leaders turn data into action across planning, execution, and returns, so teams can operate with more confidence, agility, and precision. The organizations that will lead next are the ones that make AI part of everyday operations and turn it into a consistent operational advantage.
If you want to continue the conversation from Gartner Supply Chain Symposium/Xpo, reach out to us today to explore what these priorities mean for your supply chain.
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