Supply-Chain Success in ’26 Calls For ‘Intimacy’ and a Little of the Old-Fashioned Way

After half a decade of battling one fire after another, supply chain leaders enter 2026 with a chance to build some stability into their work.

Doing so successfully will mean executive teams truly taking on the lessons of the pandemic, the inflation crunch that followed and the tariff turmoil that (hopefully) peaked last spring and summer. On those journeys, flexibility, strategic integration and trust are in. Gatekeeping and looking to exploit leverage are out.

“There’s a lot more intimacy now with these relationships,” Joseph Esteves, CEO of consulting firm Maine Pointe, said on a recent EndeavorB2B webinar. “You want to reward your suppliers for resilience and innovation, not just price. That’s a big conversation that’s happening more and more.”

Such conversations are becoming more frequent because the upheavals of recent years have often left manufacturers, suppliers and their logistics partners with similar and simultaneous blind spots and needing to fight short-term fires rather than investing in long-term upgrades. Charles Clevenger, a principal at UHY Consulting, said one of his major themes for 2026 is the need to better forecast demand and understand customer requirements — hence the need for the added intimacy Esteves mentioned.

Technology, including artificial intelligence applications that can more quickly sift through mountains of data, is playing a key role in the search for added stability. But Clevenger notes that old-school tools are still very effective: A supplier client of his last year addressed uncertainty with a customer not combing through planning software or reorganizing spreadsheets. Instead, he simply phoned the general manager of the plant he serviced and asked for a detailed production schedule on which to base operations in the coming weeks.

“AI is helping,” Clevenger said of improving visibility. “But the old-fashioned way still works, too.”

Simply put, being a reliable partner — whether as a supplier or the final seller — will be rewarded with market-share gains from buyers who are likely wrestling with their own supply chain uncertainties. And UHY’s Clevenger said stronger supply chain operations should, in the end, be all about better managing and spreading risk: A good way for leaders to add flexibility and a buffer to their supply chain operations, he said, is to ask themselves how they might manage risk differently if a set of suppliers were a division of their company.

“You’d frequently do things differently,” Clevenger said, adding that the thought exercise should then lead leaders to change up some things, better spread their risks and add to their peace of mind. “There are plenty of things to negotiate. This shouldn’t be one of them.”

Read the full article published by ExecutiveEdge.