We’ve all seen disaster movies in which airline passengers are warned to “brace for impact” as the plane they are riding in heads for a hard landing. Supply chain journalist Stuart Chirls believes it’s time for logistics professionals to brace for impact as “endless disruptions” challenge supply chains. He explains, “In a world increasingly marked by uncertainty and volatility, supply chain resilience is a critical focus for businesses worldwide.”[1] Chirls cites comments made by James Hookham, director of the Global Shippers Forum, who noted that disruptions are the result of geopolitical turmoil, climate change, extreme weather events, and labor disputes. Hookham concluded, “The world just seems to be in a different paradigm at the moment.” Analysts from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) insist that, in disruptive times, the resilient win.[2] That begs the question: What does it mean to be resilient?

Resilience: What Is It?

The staff at Inbound Logistics explains, “Supply chain resilience refers to a company’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover quickly from unexpected disruptions.”[3] If Chirls is correct that we are experiencing a period of “endless disruptions,” then disruptions shouldn’t be “unexpected.” Other than that, I have no quarrel with the Inbound Logistics definition of resilience. The Inbound Logistics staff goes on to explain, “Supply chain resilience means the ability to keep goods moving when problems hit. Strong supply chains can respond quickly, recover fast, and adapt to unexpected events like natural disasters, market fluctuations, or labor strikes. Instead of breaking under pressure, resilient supply chains bend and shift to meet changing needs. Leaders who focus on supply chain resilience strategies can avoid shutdowns, limit losses, and protect their brand. Companies that handle supply chain disruptions well tend to recover faster and maintain trust with partners and customers. Quick recovery supports smoother supply chain operations and long-term growth. … Supply chain resilience means more than reacting to crises. It involves designing systems that keep running through chaos. Companies that build supply chain resilience avoid bottlenecks, reroute shipments, and respond faster to supply chain risks.”

A couple of years ago, supply chain journalist Robert J. Bowman suggested that being resilient wasn’t enough. He explained, “Most corporate survival strategies are crafted to help businesses withstand any number of unanticipated supply chain disruptions. But how many are poised to profit from times of adversity? The answer: disturbingly few. The idea of deriving value from uncertainty, as opposed to merely weathering it, was formulated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2012 New York Times bestseller Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.”[4] The difference between an “antifragile” supply chain and a “resilient” one is not, at first, very obvious. Nevertheless, Tim Payne, vice president analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice, insists the difference is important.

He told Bowman, “Rather than trying to keep uncertainty out of the supply chain, antifragile supply chains embrace uncertainty with the objective of learning, evolving and adapting their capabilities based on their improved knowledge of it.” Payne adds, “Embracing uncertainty means ‘not trying to predict the hell out of it and get precision.’ Instead, businesses should be viewing their supply chains ‘through the lens of probability,’ and be ready to adjust the forecast in line with actual events.”

At Enterra Solutions®, we call this paying attention to market signals. When the Forbes Technology Council asked me to comment about how companies can become more operationally resilient, I stated: “The biggest challenge in achieving resilience is not redundancy, but systematically anticipating and adapting to disruptions before they occur. To compete, organizations are leveraging AI for scenario-based modeling and developing robust contingency plans. Prescriptive and anticipatory models and adaptable response frameworks enable businesses to manage risks proactively and respond quickly.”[5]

Becoming Antifragile (and Resilient)

As it became increasingly clear that the world was behaving differently, or as Hookham put it, operating in a “different paradigm,” Enterra® developed and introduced the Enterra Dynamic Enterprise Resiliency System™ (EDERS™): a groundbreaking new product designed to enable enterprises to convert macroeconomic and geopolitical chaos into powerful competitive advantage. EDERS is built on Enterra’s Autonomous Decision Science® platform, which enables organizations to autonomously analyze data, predict outcomes, and execute optimized decisions with high accuracy across complex business operations. It anticipates market shifts, recommends optimal actions, and makes decisions with up to 90% accuracy, even in the most volatile economic and political environments. This is what it means to embrace uncertainty and profit from times of adversity.

Payne told Bowman, “It’s hard to find anybody that’s fully antifragile. It’s a matter of degrees.” He went on to list six capabilities that Gartner has identified that characterize antifragile supply chains in times of uncertainty. They are:

• Enabling “dynamic” decision-making;

• Accurately calculating the return on investment from supply chain systems at different times;

• Assessing supply chain resilience through constant experimentation and stress testing;

• Viewing redundancies in areas such as inventory, capacity and suppliers as an investment opportunity rather than a burden;

• Incorporating probabilities, options and thresholds in end-to-end planning, both for the short and middle term, and

• Taking an “arm’s-length” approach to overseeing and adjusting decision-making at the local level, intervening “only if policies are breached.”

Concluding Thoughts

Shortly after Bowman touted the benefits of creating antifragile supply chains, Maxime C. Cohen, the Scale AI Chair Professor of Retail and Operations Management at McGill University, and Christopher S. Tang, the Edward W Carter Chair in business administration at UCLA, explained how artificial intelligence can help make supply chains more resilient. They wrote, “AI has the potential to revolutionize supply chain operations by improving decision-making and efficiency. According to a 2022 McKinsey survey, respondents reported that the highest cost savings from AI are in supply chain management. Specifically, AI can add value to supply chain planning, including production, inventory management, and product distribution. Companies can also leverage AI-powered tools to process vast amounts of real-time data and improve the accuracy of demand forecasting. … The interplay between AI and supply chain management, two critical sectors, is more important than ever to create economic stability and resiliency.”[6]

In the short time since Cohen and Tang wrote those words, things have move forward rapidly. BCG analysts explain, “The rise of mobile, social platforms, the cloud, machine learning, AI, GenAI, and now agentic AI has transformed both innovators and their offerings while raising the table stakes for digital excellence.” To stay ahead of competitors, companies must keep abreast of current events and embrace the uncertainty that characterizes the business environment.

Footnotes

[1] Stuart Chirls, “‘Brace!’ Endless disruptions mark new path to supply chain resiliency,” Freight Waves, 1 July 2025.

[2] Justin Manly, Amy MacDougall, Johann Harnoss, Ketil Gjerstad, Wendi Backler, Michael Wahlen, Satoshi Hirashita, Cornelia Ernst, Beth Viner, and Ryoji Kimura, “In Disruptive Times, the Resilient Win,” Boston Consulting Group, 26 June 2025.

[3] Staff, “Supply Chain Resilience: What It Is, Common Disruptions, and How to Build,” Inbound Logistics, July 2025.

[4] Robert J. Bowman, “For Supply Chains, Resilience Isn’t Enough. You Need to Be Antifragile.” SupplyChainBrain, 18 December 2023.

[5] Expert Panel, “20 Tech Experts On How To Boost Operational Resilience,” Forbes, 23 April 2025.

[6] Maxime C. Cohen and Christopher S. Tang, “The Role of AI in Developing Resilient Supply Chains,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 5 February 2024.