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Supply Chain Now
Supply Chains to Admire 2026: Winners and Dynamic Benchmarking Opportunities
00:59:41
In this episode of Supply Chain Now, Scott W. Luton and Lora Cecere (Founder of Supply Chain Insights), are joined by Dave Winstone (Global Director, Supply Chain Excellence at Dow) and Wael Abdelmalek (CEO of Uthereal). Together, they explore what it truly means to define and measure supply chain excellence, moving from rigid historical spreadsheets to data-driven, dynamic benchmarking and human-AI partnership.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:26]
Laura Cesare
Gartner Top 25 is well known, but it's 50% opinion and the focus on the financial data is much shorter and it's not as transparent on the data analysis and it doesn't have the industry sector rigor and the Gardner top 25. You put all companies in a spreadsheet and shake them up so you don't see the patterns of say the chemical industry or the broad line apparel industry. All these companies have fought different headwinds and so the question and the supply chains to admire is can you within your organization align, drive strategy and innovation to be able to overcome those challenges. And that's really the power of the supply chains to admire.
- [02:16]
Scott Luton
Welcome to Supply Chain now, the number one voice of Supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights and real supply chain leadership from across the globe. One conversation at a time. Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be. Scott Luton and special guest host Laura Cesare with you here on Supply Chain now. Laura, how have you been? How are you doing?
- [02:41]
Laura Cesare
You know, I am doing great. I'm very excited for our launch today and thank you so much for having us on your show.
- [02:48]
Scott Luton
Hey, we're delighted the band's getting back together and we got so much good stuff to share here today folks. We got a very special show. As Laura's alluding to, we're going to go unpack the 2026 supply chains to admire. Not only will be will we be sharing how 32 companies recognized through data driven research for their supply chain performance, but we're also going to discuss what truly separates top performing supply chains from the rest of the market. Plus, in addition to Laura, which hey, that's plenty, we're also going to be joined by a few other guests. One longtime supply chain leader who has tested and used the methodology behind supply chains to admire for years and one tech guru who's joining us to provide a quick product demonstration of Ask Laura which offers a tremendous opportunity for dynamic benchmarking. So stay tuned for all that and much, much more. And Laura, it's great to have you back on supply chain. Now this is going to be a big show here today, chock full of opportunity for the market, huh?
- [03:50]
Laura Cesare
Well, yeah, I hope, you know, I hope people enjoy the work we've done,
- [03:55]
Scott Luton
you know, and it's been a big, a laborious project. Right. It didn't just happen overnight. We were talking about about this in the pre show and a lot of folks came together to deliver one of the big things we're gonna be talking about which is Ask Lara and I can't wait to share that as I bet you can't wait either, huh?
- [04:14]
Laura Cesare
I can't. I, I'm excited for people to take YL's challenge. YL's the developer and I said to YL, let's test scalability. I hope lots of people around the world test the dynamic benchmarking and we can see how scalable YL system is. So I look forward to that.
- [04:33]
Scott Luton
I do too. So as we move into this next chapter and really get down to business, I want to welcome in one of our two featured guests here today. So he has spent almost 40 years in global supply chain serving as a truly a visionary leader that has driven all sorts of transformation and innovation. He is well known for bringing practical optimism to the table as well as a profound ability to simplify even the most complex of issues. I want to welcome in Dave Winstone, supply chain director at dow. Hey. Hey Dave. How you doing today?
- [05:06]
Dave Winstone
I'm doing well, Scott. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Hi Laura.
- [05:10]
Scott Luton
Hey Dave and Laura. We have been, we're excited to hear from Dave and yl, but we heard some news from Dave in the green room. Laura, because it's the World cup, the most popular, biggest sporting event in the world and I wish I had a ticket to a game. Laura, I bet you wish you had A ticket to a game. I think. I think we're both ofer. Is that right, Laura?
- [05:36]
Laura Cesare
Exactly.
- [05:37]
Scott Luton
No tickets, but Dave recently took in a game. Dave, tell us about it.
- [05:44]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, I was there. England's opening game, if you can't tell from the accent, is that English fan. And this is football, right? It's the one you play with your feet and kicking it rather than throwing it as well. Got to see them beat Croatia in the opening game and getting ready to cheer them on this afternoon in the next game. It's been an awesome tournament. All of the games have been fantastic. All of the teams, even the underdogs, the smaller teams have done fantastic. So some great positive energy coming from everywhere on this. So thrilled, thrilled to be a part of watching it.
- [06:14]
Scott Luton
Dave. I love that. And Laura, his. Some of his comments there. First off, congrats to England for knocking off a giant beater in Croatia. They've had an incredible record in, in recent World Cups. But secondly, he touched on something that you touched on in the green room. And yes, I was gonna bird nerd out with you in my fun warmup question, but I'd rather touch on something a bit more serious. He talked about the positivity and the passion. And you made some comments in the pre show. I'd love for you to kind of reshare those here, Laura.
- [06:47]
Laura Cesare
Well, I think we have so much negative energy in the world that I love what's happening. You know, Ken kicking the ball because it's positive passion. And I love celebrating sports where we have a great demonstration of teamwork and a lot of learning about the people that got there. Everybody on that field. It took a village, it took a parent taking them to practice, it took a coach. It takes, you know, lots of training. And I just love the energy, positive energy.
- [07:19]
Scott Luton
Laura, I'm with you. And there's some, there's some great supply chain analogies. We'll have to write about that later. But one more thing to add to your comments. You know, the fervor and the passion and just the humanity in Atlanta just over the last week or so and how we've seen it, documented and experienced it, it has been so unique and so palpable. And I tell you, I wish we could play the World cup every year to make that happen. So, Dave and Laura, thanks so much for your comments there. And Dave, good luck or good luck there by his teams out there. How about that? So, Dave, you know, three people out there may not be familiar with your background. I know I shared just a couple bullet points I could have been here for an hour kind of sharing all the things you've done in your, in your career. Would you, for the sake of doing some level setting, would you tell us more about yourself and your background? Dave?
- [08:13]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, thank you, Scott, appreciate that. So you mentioned just over four decades in industry across purchasing, manufacturing, supply chain. 39 of those years have been with Dow, first 10 in Europe and the last 29 or so in the U.S. the first 29 years of my career was really working in a business unit in dao, big, big multinational. And that was the Dow agrosciences business unit, now part of Corteva going forward. But that gave me the chance to sort of work at different levels throughout the business units. Where I first met Laura, we first started doing some benchmarking and some work together on while I was at Dow Agrisciences and in the last 10 years or so of my career I've been with Dow in Midland, Michigan, working at a corporate supply chain role, leading a number of major projects and transformations that we've been doing and most recently have been leading what we call our supply chain excellence efforts across the organization. So a lot of years, a lot of breadth, a lot of experience in major projects and using benchmarking and some of the ideas and the concepts that we've worked on and asked Laura as well.
- [09:31]
Scott Luton
Outstanding, Dave. Thank you very much. Laura, before I ask you for some context around the research, I know you've got a lot of you hold Dave in high regard based on not just what he's done in industry, but how y' all have collaborated. Would you comment on that, Laura?
- [09:46]
Laura Cesare
Dave has been a great friend and collaborator through this process. You know, in 2012, when I first started Supply Chain Insights, we did divisional benchmarking of Dow Agri Sciences and that really helped me to hone some of the methodology. And he was a tester for this product and he gave great insights. We had, you know, a great group of testers. We work through 300 bugs and features and he's been a great collaborator all the way.
- [10:21]
Scott Luton
Outstanding, outstanding. Thank you Dave, for what you do. And Laura, appreciate that those insights as well. Laura, when we think about the supply chains to admire, as you just mentioned, it's been around for quite some time. You built an incredible body of research. But folks that may be newer to it and the methodology that drives it, would you shed some light on that?
- [10:43]
Laura Cesare
The methodology was started in 2013 and I worked at a company called AMR Research that got bought by Gartner. And when I was at amr. We did two things that was really very early in my thinking. One was we did benchmarking, which took us about four weeks to actually benchmark a company. And when we got done, we had that benchmarking, but it was very hard to have a relevant sample. And I worked with Deborah Hoffman on that and Deborah's now retired. And then we started the AMR top 25. And we were sitting around a table and we were talking about, you know, the concepts of the AMR top 25 that became the Gartner top 25 and the discussion around opinion and voting. And I watched that really work. And right before Gartner bought amr, I was really questioning of, I don't think that I know enough to have a relevant opinion on all of these companies, nor do I think the industry has enough knowledge. And I don't think this is data driven. I don't think that it goes over a period long enough for us to see a trend. And I think there needs to be a different methodology. So Gartner bought amr. I had previously worked at Gartner and didn't want to work at Gartner again. So I left and started Supply Chain Insights, which then started the work on the supply chains to admire. There was a person at intel by the name of Manny who introduced me to Arizona State University. And we began the work on which metrics actually have the highest correlation to market cap and became market cap per employee with our later work with Georgia Tech. And we started looking at the trends and the orbit charts, which I'm a big fan of orbit charts to understand the patterns of are we driving improvement, are we resilient, and how are we doing against the industry sector. My first work with Arizona State University was the foundation of the supply chains to Admire. It's based upon wide chart data, which is the source for financial analysts, which allows us to synchronize all of the public reporting. So, for example, Unilever reports in 24 different public markets with different currencies. And then you have a lot of restatements. So YCharts allows us to do that. Then we had to develop sectors and industry groups and NACS codes and SIC codes weren't sufficient. So we started interviewing companies, we built sectors and we would interview supply chain leaders and say, does this look like a good peer group? And so we built the peer groups and that took us about two years to build the peer groups. And then we started looking at what are the methodologies for measuring improvement. So in the supply chain stood Meier if you're driving improvement faster than 2/3 of the peer group, you get a check mark and you need to go to the next step, which is are you outperforming the peer group on the metrics that matter, that have the correlation in aggregate to market cap, which is growth inventory turns operating margin, not gross margin and not cost, and return on capital employed and we change from return on invested capital. ROIC to Roce two years ago. Now, the study between improvement and performance is really interesting to me because it's like going to the gym. When you first are out of shape and you go to the gym, it's really easy to drive improvement. But as companies become more mature and they get larger, it's hard to drive improvement and actually have performance. So the 32 companies have outperformed their industry sector in improvement, performance and driving value.
- [14:42]
Scott Luton
Outstanding. And Laura, um, did you say it's easy when you first start going to the gym?
- [14:48]
Laura Cesare
Yeah, you may hurt like heck, but you know, it's a lot easier to drive improvement when you first go to the gym. You know, we all got to go there this afternoon. Then if, you know you've got rippling muscles, you know, you know, if you think about athletes, at some point in time they have to change what they're doing. Maybe it's changing their handlebars and biking or changing their training regimen, but can't just do the same old stuff. And it's important to be disciplined and be very clear on definitions and the journey of supply chain excellence.
- [15:21]
Scott Luton
Well said, Laura. And I was only kidding. I get what you mean. And you know, once that low hanging fruit is gone, it is tougher and tougher especially to continue our gains from that point in time. Well said, Laura. All right, so Dave, I'd love, you know, especially for someone like you, an industry leader like yourself, it's been, you know, collaborating in a lot of what Laura has described for years. Would you share some of your perspective on the value of the research and maybe touch on how you've been able to leverage it within your organization?
- [15:53]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing I would say about it is it, it measures what matters. And you know, Laura's done a lot of work to actually sort of prove statistically that this is what drives value in a company. It's not just about cost, it's about driving value in an organization. And I think it's about the data that supports that, not a popularity contest. And so you focus back on the data and you start thinking about what do you have to do to be able to move the needle on those elements of the data. And I think Laurie introduced this idea of an orbit chart so you're able to see across a couple of metrics traded off against each other what the performance is over time. I found that a really powerful tool to be able to show the performance that we've had in my company or my division when I was working in a division over time against a benchmark for the industry. And I think that relevant benchmark is also important. It's not against any and every other company. You take an industry benchmark, which I think is really important to being able to interpret whether or not your company is performing well against its peers.
- [17:05]
Scott Luton
Dave, well said. And folks, if you're new to orbit charts, gosh, do we have a tool for you. You'll have to, we'll have to get you connected with Laura because I wish I was introduced to orbit charts back in college because it does to kind of Dave's point it allow it communicates information and context that a lot of other charts do not. Laura and Dave, I want to pick back up as I'd mentioned and we're about to share some good news folks. The 32 winners, data driven performance winners from the research. So stick around. But first I want to really compare and contrast things a bit from what makes supply chains to admire in the methodology all that you just described Laura and Dave and what it, you know, compare and contrast with what we other things we see out there. You know, you got the Gartner top 25 which, which is popular other things out there that organizations use. Laura, if you would compare and contrast these different bodies of research for us.
- [18:04]
Laura Cesare
Well first off, there are a number of benchmarking efforts that is like a spreadsheet and you can't really see the patterns in the spreadsheet. So if you've got a benchmarking exercise where you're just looking at the spreadsheet, you're going to miss the pattern. Second of all, you know The Gardner Top 25 is well known but it's 50% opinion and the focus on the financial data is much shorter and it's not as transparent on the data analysis and it doesn't have the industry sector rigor and the Gardner top 25, you put all companies in a spreadsheet and shake them up so you don't see the patterns of say the chemical industry or the broad line apparel industry. All these companies have fought different headwinds. The other thing that I think is really interesting in the supply chains to admire is look at the power of the orbit chart to understand the headwinds of what that industry was going through. There are 27 sectors and 80% of the sectors were actually regressing after the pandemic at the intersection of operating margin and inventory turns. And there's a belief that if I just keep putting the power to the metal that I'm going to drive improvement. But these headwinds of what is happening and shifts in demand and markets and the complexity that's going unchecked in the organization is causing these industry sectors to actually move backward. And so the question in this pie chains to admire is can, can you within your organization align, drive strategy and innovation to be able to overcome those challenges? And that's really the power of the supply chains to admire.
- [19:58]
Scott Luton
All right, so Dave, we're talking about comparing and contrasting supply chains to admire from other resources out in the marketplace. What are your thoughts, Dave?
- [20:07]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, I mean, I think I said about earlier that it measures the things that matter and it's really important that you get data. That's true. It's not always easy or convenient. Trust me, I've interpreted the dao stuff and it doesn't always make good reading when you look at that. But it is the right things that matter. And when you really dig into understanding why and what it is you would have to do to move the needle on that consistently over time. All of the metrics, not just picking one of them and having a single focus initiative on it. We as a company have had a number of inventory focused initiatives, but it's not just about inventory. You've got to be able to add value and improve margin as well. And again, I'll use that orbit chart example when you can see how you make the pattern on both of those over time, you really start to see about what is it. You ask the right questions about what you'd have to do to be able to move the needle on that over time. And I think that's the, that's the power of it. It makes you uncomfortable, but it makes
- [21:11]
Scott Luton
you think, well, and we gain. It's like going back to the gym example. We gain when we are uncomfortable. It's not fun, It's a little bit of painful. It's kind of fish out of water sometimes, but that's when we gain. And one more thing, Laura, before we reveal the winners, you and your team have done a good job of rooting out as much subjectivity that we find. I mean, folks, I love a good list like anyone else but so many lists that are out there are chock full of so much subjectivity that it really diminishes the value. Laura, I'm not picking on anyone in particular, but speak. We got to be objective about so many things these days. Speak to the power of objectivity and that emphasis on supply chains to admire.
- [22:04]
Laura Cesare
I totally embrace what you're saying. There are lots of companies that want to know how we're doing on social responsibility or how we're doing on customer service. There is no good data source that I can find for that. I'd love to include it, but I just don't find anything that allows us to measure and benchmark demand, forecast value add, inventory value add, customer service or corporate social responsibility would love to include that stuff, but I don't find a good data source. So we're very, very rigorous in the data source and scrubbing the data, making sure we have 10 years worth of data for everybody in the supply chains to admire. The other thing about the supply chains to admire is we don't limit it by company size. And so I found three things about the report to be really interesting. Small companies outperform large companies. So Monster outperforms Anheuser Busch, Church and Dwight outperforms Procter and Gamble. Secondly, when you look at the industry profiles and you look at the fact that 80% of the sectors are performing worse than pre pandemic really makes you scratch your head saying, I don't think we have best practices. I think we have historic practices that we need to evolve. One of the things that makes me crazy is when I see all this talk about AI from the bottom up, but we're not really establishing that balanced scorecard at a strategy level and engaging the finance team to have a different discussion. Because only about 20% of the flow in today's supply chain can be really managed by a focus on the lowest cost. And the third thing that I find really interesting in the data is when you boil it all down, There are about 50 companies that bounce in and out of the supply chains to admire. And those are the companies that I think we really need to learn from. And one of my issues was I didn't have a way that people could easily access the data about those companies, build their own orbit charts, compare it to their orbit charts, understand what they're doing. When I was at amr, people would call me and they would say, what technologies does the AMR top 25 use? And I'm like, that's the wrong questions. It's really about leadership. It's about strategy, it's about alignment and it's about the movement from functional metrics to really driving the balanced scorecard.
- [24:46]
Scott Luton
All right, so so so so Laura, we got some great news to share. Laura and Dave we do. We want Scott unveil the 32 companies that have been recognized and from their data driven performance by the 2026 supply chains to admire research. So Laura, tell us more.
- [25:09]
Laura Cesare
I love these companies. Many of these companies have driven process innovation. When you look at the medical device industry and you look at how change their business model to get information from the hospitals and information on usage, they're great stories. When you look at the work on the evolution of the process industries, I remember working with buyersdorf back when they were private and the fact that they've made the supply chains to admire is great. When you look at CCL and PCA and the containers and packaging industry, it's remarkable to see how much they've pulled out ahead. Now the chemical industry is one that I think people should really pay close attention to because the chemical industry goes into every other value chain and the lack of growth in the chemical industry has caused some unfortunate dynamics. Same thing with the semiconductor industry. Both of those industries are very fragile when we think about value chains. But there's a lot to learn and in the report I try to tell you the insights of what I found from each company in each sector so that people can think about their business processes and drive not just technology innovation, but process innovation and business innovation to better serve customers.
- [26:34]
Scott Luton
All right, so folks, if you're listening to us, you're missing a visual where you have all 32 winners laid out in a retail a process and a discrete manufacturer factoring buckets. You but you can access all the information, all the winners via downloading the report. So make sure you do that. Two quick asides before I get Dave's comments. Completely subjective. I'm talking about both sides of my mouth. As a longtime Lowe's customer, I love to see them included in the 32. And my dear father in law, Fred Midkiff spent over 30 years with John Deere and John Deere is also one of the 32 recognized for their performance. And I can hear him doing cartwheels from the upstate of South Carolina now. All right, so Dave, I'd love to get your observations on the winners or any common themes or other particular items that you think folks should take away from this year's research.
- [27:31]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, well congratulations to all the companies that are on there knowing the methodology really well. I realized how hard it is to be able to get on there and how you have to have that consistency of performance to do that. So that would be the first thing. I think this really is about consistent performance over the years and what I see with the companies that I do know on there, there's a focus on things like portfolio rationalization and network design is some of the key things that they go after. And if you end up on mergers and acquisition and divestitures stuff or big ERP implementations, those tend to be distractions that make it difficult to be able to perform consistently against these metrics on an ongoing basis. So those would be my observations, Scott.
- [28:16]
Scott Luton
Dave, well said. And we have way too many distractions across industry.
- [28:21]
Laura Cesare
And I just want to add one other thing, Scott. If you looked at the overlay between the supply chains to admire and those other pieces of information, there's only two companies on this list that are also on the Gartner top 25, which is Apple and TSMC. And I think it's really important because lots of people that are on stages all around the world talking about supply chain excellence aren't really driving the goods. And I think we've got to be accountable in a data driven way to make choices that drive value.
- [28:57]
Scott Luton
I agree. Well said Laura and Dave, I mentioned with that said and Laura, I love this quote, right? We purposely selected this quote. Laura said, quote, I would like to help spark a different conversation to help supply chain leaders drive value and sidestep the stupidity of existing conversations, end quote. And then secondly Laura is. And then this is a little snippet from the interview with you that we published. And with that said and Dave and Laura as y' all both were talking about observations. Well, I think the research identified five things, important things that the winners have in common and we're showing this but folks listening, those five things were customer focus, leadership, alignment, clear strategic direction, balance, performance measure metrics rather and a culture of process innovation. And those belie the point or support. I'm not sure if I use the word Bella correctly. Support the point that Laura said earlier when she was getting calls about the technology. It's not the technology. Laura, quick comment for switch over and dive into Ask Laura.
- [30:05]
Laura Cesare
Well, I wanted to help people to really think hard about those concepts of what is clear strategy, what is a balanced scorecard, what is customer centric process innovation. It isn't just ask sales what they're going to sell and in the supply chains to admire. There are many stories around business innovation around not just operations, teams doing something different for the customers, but really the alignment of commercial operations and engineering teams to be able to define new products, to be able to use data in different ways, to sense markets, to be able to to listen and learn from E commerce, to be able to be market sensing. And so I want to encourage people to think out of that traditional supply chain box where we're focused on demand, error and risk management. It's only about supply. People aren't looking at demand and market shifts market to market. And it's my hope that we can do that. And the next section where we're going to talk about dynamic benchmarking is my effort to use large language models and Agentix to try to help people to test their maturity process organizationally, technology, AI readiness, financial results and have a hard conversation at the board level about what is supply chain excellence.
- [31:39]
Scott Luton
So Laura, you're reading my mind and you've already kind of answered my next question. I'm going to ask you.
- [31:44]
Laura Cesare
Okay.
- [31:44]
Scott Luton
And before we bring in YL and folks are going to enjoy YL and Dave's perspective here today, Ask Laura at a high level, what is it beyond what you've shared?
- [31:57]
Laura Cesare
Ask Laura is a large language model that sits on top of my research from 2015 to 2025. So it allows people to ask an answer around the research. The dynamic benchmarking is based upon the Y chart data and the maturity models that I've built. And the maturity models for process, organization and technology maturity are based upon my quantitative research that I've done through the past 10 years. And they're the questions that I've asked over and over and over again. So four to five times in the industry and initially the model will bounce against those research answers over time. I want to get hundreds of thousands of answers that will bounce not only against the research which was 200 to 500 responses, but also bounce against industry, sector, regional information and help people learn. And I want the model to learn of what factors make a difference in driving the metrics that matter that improve market cap per employee or price to tangible book.
- [33:06]
Scott Luton
All right, quite a mission y' all have been on and I want to bring in a very special guest that has helped push that mission forward because Ask Laura was built in partnership with YL Abdul Malik and the team at Euthereal where he serves as CEO. He has held previous leadership roles with Companies such as PwC, Credit Suisse, Swiss Rather and Amazon Web Services. Let's bring in Yel with Ethereal.
- [33:34]
Dave Winstone
Hey.
- [33:34]
Scott Luton
Hey Y. How you doing today?
- [33:36]
Yel Abdul Malik
Great, great. Thank you very much. Scott, all good? Good. Thank you very much for inviting me. Good to see you. And Laura and Dave as well.
- [33:43]
Scott Luton
You well, great to see you as well. And really quick. So we know Dave's allegiances for the World Cup. Me and Laura, we're, we're hope holding out some hope the US Team might do something. Yl, I think you've got three horses in this race. Before we kind of unpack your background, would you share your three teams with us?
- [34:01]
Yel Abdul Malik
Definitely. So it would be Egypt, where I'm from, the UK where, where I grew up, and then now Switzerland is where I live. So they're all doing well. So let's see.
- [34:12]
Scott Luton
All right, well good. Best of luck to all three. Dave is not fair. He's got three teams. We got one. Is that fair, Dave?
- [34:19]
Dave Winstone
I have two. You have to.
- [34:20]
Scott Luton
Oh, what's your, what's the second one, Dave? I missed the second one.
- [34:23]
Dave Winstone
Well, England in the US where I live now.
- [34:25]
Scott Luton
Oh, okay. Good, good, good, good.
- [34:27]
Dave Winstone
Both doing well.
- [34:28]
Scott Luton
All right, so. All right, so why L. I shared again, much like Dave, y' all been doing big things industry for a long time. You deserve a, you know, two hour introduction. But for the sake of time here today had to share a couple bullet points. But would you for the folks out there, share a little bit more about your background and that's 1A, 1B. Is your role in helping to develop ask Laura?
- [34:51]
Yel Abdul Malik
Absolutely. So my background is mainly in AI and data architecture. So I used to be an enterprise architect at Amazon Web Services when I was helping Amazon's cloud biggest customers actually build data and AI platforms in the cloud. And two years ago I decided to leave and build my own startup. And this is where Ethereal was born. We wanted to create a way where humans organizations can partner with AI for mutual benefit, learning and acceleration. Personally, I don't necessarily buy too much into this. AI completely is going to replace us. I actually think I'm more on the side of we're going to work alongside with AI to scale and this is really the vision and the culture we wanted to be. Build your Sierra is an AI deep tech startup. We're based in Switzerland, based in Zurich here in Switzerland and we focus on building private AI system organizations, mainly knowledge heavy organizations because we want them to turn their own expertise into AI systems. First of all they own but they can scale and actually reach more audience and maximize their impact. The relationship and the collaboration with Laura started about a year ago, maybe a bit more now where we met through an introduction from a mutual contact that we met at a conference. And when we first sat down with Laura, really, the challenge was clear. Her brain is an absolute treasure trove of methodologies, frameworks, data, you name it, you know more than I do. And we can make the supply chain leaders constantly able to pick our brains and then really get some of her insights 24 hours a day. That would be great. So when we started working together, we immediately started building Ask Lora. And then the mission was really simple. How do we accelerate Lora's expertise in the loop? And we didn't want this to be some sort of a search bar on a bunch of PDFs or some generic answers by a chatbot that pulling stuff out of the Internet, or basically what the large language model happened to believe on that day. We really wanted to make her expertise at the center of it. And Laura also shared the same. The same, cared about the same thing as us. She wanted it to be right. She wanted to have her research expertise to be at the center of IT as well. So this is where kind of we started building this private AI, where Laura's Norwich at the center of it. And not only this, it's grounded to the data and research she believes is verified and. But it's clever enough to pull data from the outside world when it needs to. And this was really kind of the key here. And building our SCLORI has been a super exciting exercise because I personally believe that the journey is kind of the beginning of something big, because now Laura now has a partnership with her AI in a very interesting way. Her AI is going to be out in the world, interacting with users, collecting a bunch of data, bringing back insights in volumes. And Laura is almost going to be the engineer behind it, where she's got almost a lot of judgment into what she's seeing from a data perspective, and then continues to push the AI to be more smart and more advanced. And I believe this partnership is where great innovations are going to come from, the next wave of AI. And if I may, I'll. I'm obviously a tech guy, so I. I want to dive a little bit deeper in the tech, but I'm just gonna keep it light.
- [38:38]
Scott Luton
So thank you, Wael. Thank you. Because I am. You're a lot.
- [38:45]
Demo Narrator
You'll.
- [38:45]
Scott Luton
You'll know more about technology than I'll know in my entire life, so thank you very much.
- [38:52]
Yel Abdul Malik
Fantastic. So, yeah, I mean, the technology behind it is basically, it all starts with proprietary algorithms that really good at understanding knowledge. So for AI to interact well with knowledge and not to hallucinate and make up stuff. It needs to have almost a trusted source to interact with and pull information from. So the technology almost always starts by let's get that knowledge, let's break it down, let's build structures on top of it so we can find it easily and then let's build advanced algorithms that instead of trying to understand what the user is looking for, it tries to understand what the user want to know. And there's a big difference here because when you know, when you ask a question, not necessarily that's what you're looking for. Maybe there's something behind the question. And this was like kind of an approach that we worked on a lot for research. Really understand the user intent and really combining the two together so you understand what the user intent is. You have the data stored in an accessible structure to the AI. Now you can put an AI on top and say hey, you need to focus on the research and make sure you use that in all your interactions with the user. But we also went a step further. We deployed agentic behaviors and these are more capable processes that instead of retrieving just information, it's able to execute tasks and apply this judgment throughout a really long process. And that's what the benchmarking is built on. These gentic behaviors that again use Laura's expertise, research data, use its own knowledge base which now coming from Lora as well and be able to provide these kind of board level reports and insights. I kept it light just like I promised.
- [40:41]
Scott Luton
No, hey yl really, I mean, you know, there's gonna be a lot of questions I'm sure with folks that want to dive in deeper after today into a lot of, of the stuff you were touching on. So I thank you for the, for the, I used to say Reader's Digest version, I must upgrade that to TikTok version I think. But Laura, really quick and while it's great to have you join me and Lauren and Dave, we've got a quick demo we're going to be sharing. But Laura, before we share that demo because it's three to four minutes, anything else that you want to level set with before we play that demo? Laura?
- [41:15]
Laura Cesare
There are three things I think are important for the user. One is all of the entries are confidential. We verify that a user is actually associated with a company by their email but we never reveal that response so the responses are confidential. Two, it's a learning engine that over time we'll learn about the relationship between these models to value and we will publish twice a year for people all around the world through Open research to learn. So when people fill this out, they're actually contributing to the industry. Three, we're not done. So in July we'll add all public companies in the world. Today, the only companies that are in the model are in the supply chains to admire, which are about 450 companies. But in July we'll have every public company in the world in this model. And the other thing is in July people can compare the results to the top performers, these 50 companies and the supply chains to admire that outperform and also Gartner top 25. And they can pick and choose. There's no perfect methodology for benchmarking, but the discussion is what's really important.
- [42:36]
Scott Luton
Laura, I'm with you. I'm with you all. Every, every report we've mentioned here today offers some valuable nuggets, anecdotes and fodder for discussion. Some discussions are different than others, but that's a great point. Point you finished on there, Laura?
- [42:50]
Laura Cesare
Okay, so I just want to add one other thing.
- [42:52]
Grow Therapy Announcer
Scott, please.
- [42:53]
Laura Cesare
Yeah, quick. You'll see in this video that you can get the benchmark in five to six minutes, which is certainly a lot quicker than any other methodology I've ever used.
- [43:04]
Demo Narrator
Welcome to Ask Laura. Ask Laura is a large language model with my research that I've been working on for 15 years to help people to understand supply chain excellence. Now we've added Agentix to help you dynamically benchmark your supply chain. We start by collecting your demographic data. We always hold your information securely. We'll never report on your individual data, but we're getting information about where you are in the region, what your industry is, your revenue, and whether you're an early adopter or a late adopter. Then we're going to gather information about your technology satisfaction. Just fill out by each category which technologies you use and if you're satisfied or not. Don't spend a lot of time. First response is great. Give us all of your information about the technologies you use. This helps us with perspective on your company. Now we're going to look at who do you want to actually measure against and what are the metrics that you would like to use in your measurement and peer group assessment. Then we're going to look at your organizational design. How do you define organization? How do you describe your organization? Are you aligned? Then we'll move to process. Let's focus on sales and operations planning, your center of excellence, how easy it is for you to get to data. Then we're going to ask you some technology questions and then we'll answer and analyze your data. Look, it doesn't take very long and you get a report. This is front of Novoker. We start with high level company insights. This is all the large language model information coming in on you and your peer group. And we look at how mature are you organizationally? Process technology, how do you describe your attributes versus the research peer group? Looking at your process data, sales and operations planning, your market, sensing, your ability
- [45:10]
Laura Cesare
to get to data.
- [45:12]
Demo Narrator
This is really key because as you think about AI readiness, getting to data is really, really critical. Now the model is populated with wide chart data which allows you easily to compare other metrics to the peer group. So just toggle over those and then you'll look at your information around your descriptors and your operating margin versus inventory turns on orbit charts. You may have themed these in my
- [45:40]
Laura Cesare
blog, but an orbit chart allows us
- [45:42]
Demo Narrator
to look at the pattern of two metrics over time and against the peer group and to be able to analyze how you're doing against that peer group for a specific period of time on the metrics that you would like to choose. So spend some time, play around, see how you're doing and get the feel for what your pattern looks like and what your opportunity is. Then we're going to actually give you some information about your recurring demand, which is a descriptor around your headlifts, your barriers, your procs, and how you and your organization can work together to improve performance. I hope you enjoy your benchmarking.
- [46:28]
Scott Luton
Outstanding. Okay, so folks, for the sake of time, we were very quick with that demo, right? If you want an expanded version because there's a lot more there, you can reach out to Laura and I'm sure her and her team can make that happen. And also Laura, we are dropping the link asklara.supplychaininsights.com so folks can begin to experiment with this powerful new tool. But I won't go back to Dave here for a second. I'll circle back around to Weil and Laura in just a second. Dave, you've been in industry for quite some time. You've seen flavors of the month come and go. You've seen those fluffy vanilla chatbots that YL was saying we're not going to create. And you've seen some things that stuck and create value your thoughts on the value that Ask Laura poses to the market.
- [47:19]
Dave Winstone
Yeah. Thank you, Scott. You know, I mean, I spent some time actually testing this and working with the model and you know, for me it felt like you got 15 years worth of wisdom. And learning and collaboration with Laura in 30 minutes. It was that fast. And that helps you frame and ask the right questions about where you are with your, with your company. So the speed with which you can capture all of that stuff is amazing. So it was truly enlightening. I really felt like I was going back in time and read rethinking about everything that I done with more over those last 15 years in such a short period of time.
- [47:59]
Scott Luton
I love it. And time, of course, is one of our biggest constraints. I love that. So, and Dave, really quick, what was it like to be a tester? And then I'm going to get YL's experience working with all the testers. Dave, what was it, what was it like being a tester?
- [48:12]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, it was, it was awesome. And you got to see all of this stuff and you got to be able to really contribute. We were cutting and pasting and showing the things that worked and the things that didn't work. And Whale took all of that stuff and worked his magic. And what comes back is something that really works. So, you know, not just the output, but the process of actually getting it fixed and getting it better worked so much smoother as well. So I'm really excited about this and where it's going to go, where it's going to keep getting better as we go forward as well.
- [48:43]
Scott Luton
And Dave, you weren't alone. I've got a list. I bet I'll butcher some names, Laura, but I know you want to give a shout out to all the folks that were with you on this journey. Texters like Alex, we shared earlier, Bram, Christine Barnhart, the supply chain whisperer, Christian and the EY team, of course, Dave, Laura, Lucas, Margo, Matthew Spooner, Nicole and Peter Bolstorf. Great to see you, Peter. Were, I think, were they all the testers, Laura?
- [49:14]
Laura Cesare
They were. And I couldn't have had a better group of testers. They really put it through its marks. And I just want to say the Ask Laura is free and open to everyone in the world today. And I know YL has put a lot of server power on the back end, but I'm hoping you put Yell's tool to its test. And I would love to see see hundreds and thousands of people hitting Ask Laura and really testing the scalability today.
- [49:47]
Scott Luton
So we're going to go from 10 testers to a million testers, folks. Take Laura's challenge up, take Laura, take up the challenge that Laura just posed there to the industry. And really quick, before we get, we'll go back to Laura's vision in a second. But yel, you working with all these testers and all the folks that were early, you know, kicking the tires on it early, what was it like, especially coming from someone that, you know, you've, you've created meaningful technology throughout your career, what was this like? While compared to that, I've learned something
- [50:22]
Yel Abdul Malik
very important is never challenge the testers because. And this was the biggest mistake I made, I guess. I think when we were demoing this, I was really, really challenged and we like, I please, how dare you break it. And they did. So we scored a lot of really good, really good insight. And it wasn't just about breaking it. The part of the testing was suggesting features and giving feedback. It's not just about bug reporting. So what was very surprising is that we received almost half of the feedback was around features and around new things that people wanted to see. But also it gave us very good insights that where AI is in the center of any tool, the user experience in terms of interacting with it also needs to be changed or need to be more advanced. And this is one of the things we grow into. Version two, fastbore, and then the Gumby version three and Venture four. So, yeah, never challenge the testers. That would be the biggest learning for me.
- [51:34]
Scott Luton
So we're breaking that rule because we're challenging all the testers across global industry to check out Ask Lore. All right, so Laura, I'm glad you mentioned the free version that's out there. There'll be other versions as well, folks that want a more robust, greater value experience, I guess, for lack of better phrase. But you know, we've touched on this a couple times already. But before I kind of move into the. Let's speak to the so what crowd, your vision of how you see and how you see organizations leveraging. Ask Laura. Let's just put a fine point on that, on that pencil. Your thoughts, Laura.
- [52:10]
Laura Cesare
I think Ask Laura is a great example of working in partnership with AI. You know, I know a lot of people are scared of AI. And you know, I had a bright guy whale help me. He mentored me to understand large language models. Agentix. And it's a great example of AI informing what we do. I think it's also a way that executives can have a different dialogue around not just cost, not just functional metrics, but what is value and where are they currently performing, which is so essential because when I used to try to help companies in my previous jobs to be able to look at information, I couldn't gather information quick enough. And this allows us to get the process, the organizational, the technology insights for companies for maybe that year end meeting where you're setting strategy or maybe a center of excellence discussion about what is excellence? Or maybe it's the benchmark. Am I driving value through a large program? Or perhaps how are different divisions working and how can we measure performance? I'm excited to see what people learn and I'm excited to be able to publish on it as a research learning model. And I really appreciate everyone that's helped and I appreciate people that are going to test the scalability hopefully this week.
- [53:40]
Scott Luton
Outstanding. All right, weill buckle up. Hang on to your socks. Okay, so folks, hey, take up the challenge, test it out. Let us know what you think. Also really quick, again, I want to make sure folks know beyond Ask Laura, which definitely take that out for a spin. Check out the research. Right. We've got a link that we shared earlier. You can download supply chains to admire 2026 chock full, including those orbit charts that I've been nerding out about. And of course, you've got a lot of helpful visuals in the deck that you can also download and peruse via the same link. Okay, so we've shared the links for both asklore and for the research and the other accompanying material. I want to ask us a whole panel here today kind of goes back on a little different spin of a question I posed to Dave.
- [54:32]
Laura Cesare
Right.
- [54:33]
Scott Luton
Because this isn't our first rodeo and there's folks out there that have lived through a lot of these types of things and they've got their arms crossed and they're saying they're harrumps, right? And they're so what's. So I want to ask this whole panel and Dave, I'm going to start with you, then go to a while and then Laura, speak to that. So what crowd out there? Why is this consequential and why does it matter?
- [54:57]
Demo Narrator
Dave?
- [54:58]
Dave Winstone
Yeah, so for me, this is about it gets you asking the right questions and helps ground you on where you really are in your company, in your division. And that allows you to get really quickly onto the much harder questions about. So what do you do about it?
- [55:14]
Scott Luton
Okay, Dave, I'll tell you what. You know I use 5,227 words when I should use 27. And you use exactly nine words. If you need nine words, you need to teach me the succinctitude. Dave, can we arrange a session after today?
- [55:30]
Demo Narrator
We'll work on it.
- [55:31]
Scott Luton
Okay, thank you, Dave. All right, so why l We're Talking about building on Dave's response there, speaking to the so what crowd, why does this matter?
- [55:42]
Yel Abdul Malik
I think it opens new doors to be really good at what you do. Because I, I mean if you think about it, there is before, AI always used to think I've just finished a task or a job and I wish I had more time to do it. I wish I had more time to get it really there and to really push forward. But now with AI you can really do that. You can really scale yourself. And I think it's going to be that the organizations that are going to utilize it really well, they're going to see some huge benefits. And I think it does matter because it's, it's an application is going to be out in the wild and it's going to show value and it's going to collect and it's going to learn from the user and we can't wait to see what it brings back.
- [56:27]
Scott Luton
Outstanding. Well, I appreciate what you and the Ethereal team are doing to make a more more usable, more scalable and while we celebrate and lift up and empower the unique human superpowers that still drive so much incredible value across industry. All right, so Laura, I'm looking forward to this. Your response to the so what crowd, why does this matter?
- [56:53]
Laura Cesare
I think it matters because we have to have a different conversation across the organization about what is the value of a supply chain. I think many people in finance still believe that the supply chain can be efficient in the lowest cost and that we can drive reliability at the same time. And that's not true. And as we look at issues and answers around form and function of inventory or we look at organizational alignment, I think the real power of this tool is for a cross functional leadership group to take the benchmarking, compare the results and have a hard conversation about what is the right definition of supply chain and what is value and how do we get started. And I look forward to those conversations.
- [57:45]
Scott Luton
Well said, Laura. Well said. All right, so as we start to wrap, I want to make sure folks do not connect with our panel. Really appreciate yalls time here today. Dave, let's start with you. Dave Winstone. If you're not at a, an England game in the World cup or a US game or glued to the TV if you're not at the game, you're doing big things in global industry, how can folks track you down?
- [58:07]
Dave Winstone
Dave, use LinkedIn. Scott. Use my LinkedIn profile. You can contact me and message me through LinkedIn and I'll be more responsive than I have Been in answering them.
- [58:17]
Scott Luton
Outstanding, Dave. I appreciate that and that honesty. All right, Wael Abdul Malik with Ethereal. How can folks track you down, my friend?
- [58:29]
Yel Abdul Malik
LinkedIn probably the best. Or use ask Laura and break it and then call me.
- [58:36]
Scott Luton
Oh, oh, here we go. Here we go. Yel folks, you can also learn more. We'll drop his link to a euthereal but it's euthereal AI and that ethereal is spelled U T H E R E a L a I. We'll see if we can drop that there. And Laura, I'm sure folks can can find you. You're one that picks up, answers the phone and answers emails. Laura, how can folks track you down?
- [59:02]
Laura Cesare
I answer every message on LinkedIn and I look forward to hearing what people think.
- [59:07]
Scott Luton
Outstanding. I do too. I can't wait. I want to thank the entire panel here today. Dave Winstone with dow. Really appreciate what you've done for decades in industry and thanks so much for taking time to share your perspective here today. And yl really appreciate your perspective, your work and your challenge you've dropped here today. Don't be a stranger. We look forward to having you back, my friend.
- [59:31]
Yel Abdul Malik
Thank you.
- [59:32]
Scott Luton
And Laura, Cesare is great to have you back. I really love what you're doing here. I love the research is public. Folks can can jump on it and read and do, you know, act with it. They can also take Ask Laura out for a spin for free. I think there's a ton of value for industry. So thanks for, thanks for doing what you do and thanks for being back here with us, Laura.
- [59:56]
Laura Cesare
Thank you for hosting the show, Scott.
- [59:58]
Scott Luton
You bet, folks. Hope you enjoyed what a heck of a conversation with Laura and Dave and Weill even more importantly, which is tough to top. Go check out Ask Laura. Go check out the research. We want to hear from you. Give us your take. You may agree on some things, you may disagree on some things. But folks, as we start to wrap here today, I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I have. Big thanks to Laura, Dave and Weil for joining us. And you know your homework, right? You know your homework. Take one thing. And there's so much actual perspective and tools that we walk through over the last hour. Take one thing, do something with it. Deeds, not words. We've had enough of lip service. Leadership. Deeds, not words. And with all that said, Scott Luton here on behalf of Supply Chain Now Team Challenge, you do good, give forward. Be the change that's needed. We'll see you next time right back here on Supply Chain Now. Thanks everybody. Join The Supply Chain Now Community. For more supply chain perspectives, news and innovation, check out supplychainnow. Com, subscribe to Supply chain now on YouTube and follow and listen to Supply Chain Now. Wherever you get your podcasts.