MHI Solutions Improving Supply Chain Performance
Since the COVID pandemic, trade uncertainty and disruption have been commonplace in the retail supply chain.
“Whether it’s on the trade front or geopolitics or weather disasters or all manner of different things, there’s always something going on that’s affecting the retail supply chain,” Jess Dankert, vice president of supply chain for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said.
That now‑standard volatility has prompted a need for greater resilience in retail supply chains, with a focus on shorter planning horizons and more contingency planning that considers a variety of different scenarios, Dankert said. Meanwhile, retail consumers’ behaviors, preferences and attitudes have changed dramatically in recent years, putting a new kind of pressure on retailers to meet consumers where they are.
As a result of those transformative trends, retail experts say the industry’s supply chain has undergone a major shift that has placed new weight on flexibility, a keen understanding of consumers and the willingness and resources to embrace sophisticated technology.
Flexibility and Resilience
Cailin Radcliffe, vice president of revenue operations and marketing for MHI member Berkshire Grey, said the retail supply chain faces an assortment of fundamental pressures.
“Retailers are still managing SKU proliferation, rising consumer expectations and a hypercompetitive fulfillment landscape,” Radcliffe said. “But now, there’s growing urgency around network diversification, flexibility and productivity.”
Unsurprisingly, Mark Mathews, executive director of research for the National Retail Foundation, said that “far and away” the most critical issue currently driving the retail supply chain is tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding them.
“We know that retailers order three, six, nine months ahead, and it’s just really, really hard to do in this environment,” Mathews said. “If you give retailers a degree of certainty and say, ‘OK, the tariff on this one country is going to be really high but not on this one,’ retailers have shown the ability, since COVID, to move supply chains around. Retailers are willing and able to redesign their supply chains to meet the needs of consumers, but I think right now nobody is sure exactly what to do given the policy environment we’re in.”
John Harmon, managing director, technology research for Coresight Research, agreed.
“Clearly, the dynamic tariff environment and specifically the administration’s targeting China makes managing supply chains a challenge,” Harmon said. “It’s the lack of certainty that makes decision‑making the most difficult.”
Fortunately, Harmon said the pandemic prompted an emphasis on more agile and resilient supply chains. Previously, supply chains were optimized to minimize cost—”now they must reduce cost while being flexible,” he said.
“We continue to be in kind of a baseline state of some sort of disruption at any given time, and you’re really seeing that resilience muscle just get stronger and stronger,” Dankert said.
Dankert noted that a resilient supply chain in today’s climate depends on collaboration.
“There are a lot of players involved in making anything happen in the retail supply chain, whether that’s carriers, any logistics service providers, third‑party logistics, vendors, visibility providers, technology providers, the retailers themselves,” Dankert said. “There are so many different players that retailers are really focused on delivering the supply chain via that collaborative ecosystem of partners.”
Inventory planning and management is always a challenge, and 2025 has been no different with tariff‑related disruptions and volatility.
“It’s always a different answer for every retailer, depending on their customer base, their product lines, their operations and so forth, but especially now there are just very divergent narratives for different retail segments and even different companies within the same segments, based on different sourcing footprints, different exposures to trade uncertainty, different customer bases and different behaviors among the shoppers,” Dankert said.
In addition, Radcliffe said SKU complexity is proving to be one of retail’s largest challenges.
“The range of products that need to move through retail warehouses from small parcels to oddly shaped apparel to heavier auto parts is expanding,” Radcliffe said.
Radcliffe highlights a notable trend in the industry toward favoring omnichannel fulfillment from a single facility, consolidating ecommerce and store replenishment to reduce redundant infrastructure and increase speed. She said that the shift has been driven by cost pressures and the need for faster, more accurate execution.
“We’re also seeing a new level of focus on labor efficiency, end‑to‑end visibility and fulfillment accuracy,” Radcliffe said. “Retailers want to know exactly what’s happening in their facilities—where items are, what’s been touched, and how to get orders out faster with fewer errors.”
A Consumer‑Focused Supply Chain
A heightened focus on the consumer and providing an integrated consumer experience is a defining characteristic of today’s retail climate, Dankert said. Consequently, putting the customer at the center of all supply chain planning, whether it is looking at different fulfillment options or different ways of shopping, is also a key theme of the industry’s supply chain, Dankert said.
“Historically, retail supply chains were treated as the boxes in the truck or in the back room, but nowadays it’s much more an integrated piece of the entire shopping experience,” Dankert said. “That customer focus is really born out in everything around supply chain planning, and the supply chain is such an integral part of the shopping experience.”
The focus on consumer behavior and resilience means a need for optionality and flexibility from supply chains.
“Consumers want more options, whether that’s in products, in how they shop or how they receive what they buy, and they often want all these more options at lower price points,” Dankert said.
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