The End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility Mandate

Emerging Technologies Give Companies Insights from Every Vantage Point

When supply chains operate in the dark, costs add up quickly—and for too long, instinct and improvisation have stood in for solid information.

“Supply chains, by and large, are run by heroes,” said William Wappler, chief executive of MHI member Surgere. “These folks often don’t have up‑to‑date information. The data they do have is often assumptive. And yet they’re expected to coordinate with suppliers, carriers, warehousing partners and upstream and downstream teams, all without clear visibility.”

Modern supply chain technologies are now turning on the lights, giving teams the data they’ve long been missing.

“For us, visibility starts with truth,” Wappler said. “We have to gather great data, and then we have to share it across a complex number of roles and companies so they can all make decisions based on real information. It’s a very simple concept but an incredibly difficult one to execute.”

Surgere’s data framework uses a mix of technologies, including RFID, vision systems and Bluetooth, customized for each supply chain environment. “We call it a confluent system,” Wappler said. “It’s designed to gather precise, reliable data, even in complex, high‑volume operations.”

That level of granularity allows firms to optimize inventory, cut waste and meet ambitious business goals without compromising service, Wappler said.

“One of our clients needed to reduce finished‑goods inventory by 20 percent to improve their balance sheet,” he said. “That’s a smart financial goal, but not if it means missing deliveries. Real‑time visibility gave them the truth they needed to lower inventory while still meeting service targets.”

Visibility also plays a key role in sustainability efforts. “One of our automotive clients had a mandate to reduce their carbon footprint,” Wappler said. “But you can’t improve what you can’t measure.”

They helped that company monitor and evaluate how tightly each outbound truck was packed, maximizing the efficiency of the cube. Better cubing meant fewer half‑full trucks on the road and a significant emissions reduction, Wappler said.

“We track how full each truck is, how far it traveled, and then tie that directly to carbon output,” he said. With this insight, companies can optimize packing processes, hold vendors accountable and report progress toward environmental goals with precision, not guesswork, he added.

From Data to Decisions: The Mechanics of Visibility

Visibility today means more than just knowing where a shipment is. Companies want to understand how assets are handled, who’s responsible and what the financial, operational and environmental consequences will be if things go wrong.

At MHI member Yale Lift Truck Technologies, the focus is on embedding sensors and telemetry directly into warehouse equipment to create a digital thread of accountability.

“With our Yale Vision platform, operators complete digital pre‑and post‑start checklists, usage is tracked in real time, and incidents like impacts are logged with exact operator data,” said Josh Eby, the company’s global product manager.

This year, Yale began offering its base‑level telemetry system, Level I Yale Vision, as a standard feature on Class I, II, IV and V warehouse lift trucks. This system tracks utilization, location, impact events and diagnostic trouble codes and sends real‑time alerts to managers. It empowers operators to reduce downtime, improve performance and take a proactive approach to maintenance, Eby said.

Telemetry data also feeds into dashboards that track metrics such as idle time and usage patterns. These insights help managers identify charging issues and link behavior to specific operators, guiding the coaching and continuous improvement of operators.

“That’s not about blame; it’s about understanding and correcting behavior before it becomes costly,” Eby said.

The company’s Battery Vision platform builds on this foundation by tracking water levels, voltage, temperature and state of charge to maximize equipment uptime. Meanwhile, the platform can flag risks like deep discharge or electrolyte imbalance to help prevent damage. It also maintains a lifetime usage history to support warranty compliance and delivers exception reports through a cloud‑based portal, enabling smarter maintenance decisions.

“It’s about improving care and charging behavior,” Eby said.

That same logic underpins the approach at FourKites. “We’ve moved beyond just showing you problems to actually fixing them,” said Sree Mangalampalli, the company’s vice president of digital transformation solutions.

Their solution employs a suite of AI agents that proactively coordinate across the supply chain, from supplier collaboration to document compliance. Individually named AI agents perform a variety of distinct functions, Mangalampalli said.

“Tracy follows up when shipments look delayed,” Mangalampalli said. “Sam reads shipping documents and creates tracking automatically. Cassie handles delivery inquiries. Polly manages proof of delivery. These digital ‘workers’ handle the routine exceptions that can take 40 percent to 60 percent of the day.”

The payoff is significant. One FourKites customer, a Fortune 500 food‑shipping company, was juggling highly perishable inventory and tight delivery windows for major grocery chains while navigating strict on‑time‑in‑full (OTIF) requirements and a fragmented carrier network with inconsistent tracking.

“Those challenges added up fast,” Mangalampalli said. Manual coordination alone was eating up hours of staff time. After deploying the FourKites Intelligent Control Tower, the team cut two to three hours of daily email traffic and achieved full shipment visibility, including to high‑priority grocery customers, he said.

“It’s a good example of how AI automation can reduce both the time drain of manual coordination and the financial risks tied to supply chain execution,” Mangalampalli said.

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