0 Table of Contents Disruption – the new normalFrom Resilience to AntifragilityAntifragility applied to Supply ChainsHow Shippeo helps to foster AntifragilityWhy bother with Antifragility? Here at Shippeo, we’ve been making antifragility our priority for the best part of a year now; indeed, we’d like to be known as the company that helps you build antifragile and sustainable supply chains. It essentially means going beyond resilience to build a sort of immune system for handling supply chain disruptions. But what does it really mean beyond that? Disruption – the new normal From port strikes to congestion, to material and labor shortages and from natural disasters to armed conflicts, as 2025 began, disruption was already the new normal. And that was before The United States’ “Liberation Day” tariffs, which have since caused unprecedented upheaval across global supply chains. These factors and more are driving a complete paradigm shift for Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs), as I notably explained in our webinar with PwC, in February of this year. CSCOs’ traditional challenges – reducing cost, managing inventory, supporting growth and improving service – have now been joined by new ones, namely: Engaging employees Meeting customer expectations Improving sustainability Managing risks and volatility …the latter being, perhaps, the biggest challenge of all. As Elmira Seitakhmetova, Senior Manager at PwC Belgium pointed out during the same webinar, these concerns were recently confirmed by her company’s study, which showed CSCOs’ top 3 concerns are: Expanding ESG Compliance Evolving technological advances Increasing frequency of supply chain disruptions. From Resilience to Antifragility As Gartner now famously affirmed in 2023, 95% of the companies that once said they would be resilient by 2026 have given up on that objective halfway through their journey. Why? They’re looking at it all wrong. Resilience helps you manage one thing at a time, but when the disruptions repeat themselves, or too many happen at once, how do organizations respond? They have to move to antifragility, whereby through learning from a certain number of disruptions, they know how to deal with the next 10, 15 or 20 considerably more easily, without having to start from scratch each time. Exactly how vaccines work, in fact. The term “antifragility” was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a probability expert best known for his 2007 “Black Swan” book, which defined the term. “The bigger you are, the more fragile you are,” he told our webinar last year, adding: “some things need disorder as a learning process. No pain, no gain!” Whence the need to move from fragility to antifragility, passing through resilience on the way. What do these stages mean? Fragile = easily damaged or destroyed by volatility Resilient = resists damage but doesn’t necessarily benefit from it Antifragile = actively learns from uncertainty, becomes more capable with each shock or disruption. Antifragility applied to Supply Chains Rule number one: don’t waste your time forecasting events. Build blanket redundancies or robustness against these events. Today, supply chains’ focus on cost optimization has favored ‘just-in-time’ or ‘lean’ inventory strategies, because holding inventory meant more cost. With antifragility, you’re talking about redundancy, rather than crazily trying to always be efficient and optimal. This calls for scenario planning. So when upheaval happens, you roll out the scenario, rather than reinventing the wheel every time. What do you need to be able to make errors and learn from them? Trust is a massive currency in supply chain. No law says ‘you shall deliver by this date’. Yes, contractual penalties exist. The ability for trading partners to function with just trust as a fundamental currency is an amazing sight to behold. Therein, however, lies a fragility, since each handover is a risk item. “You’re only as strong as your weakest point, when the shock comes,” says Taleb. “If you can eliminate or reduce the fragility, you’ll be better off than other players.” How Shippeo helps to foster Antifragility Risk planning is now huge. All major countries now demand that you know who is involved in your supply chain, from seven to ten layers deep. This means you may one day need to plan for the risk level of (accidentally) doing business with an oligarch somewhere. Shippeo facilitates the move towards antifragility by placing shippers into a continuous learning loop. For example, with Renault Group’s Control Tower solution, the car manufacturer can spot crisis points in advance thanks to Shippeo’s predictions – for example, delayed shipment arrivals due to blocked ports or border crossings – and then identify solutions – for example, finding replacement modes of transportation – based on the Control Tower’s recommendations. In Renault’s case, this makes untold business sense, as even stopping a production line for a few minutes to wait for late parts can represent tens of thousands in lost revenue. It’s clear that antifragility is starting to take off in the supply chain world. If, and only if, we can rely on three systems: System of information – e.g. “if I know what’s going on, I can at least have a headstart” System of engagement – e.g. “of these 100 things that could go wrong, here are the 5 you should engage with” System of Resolution – e.g. “can I predict, and therefore pre-cook an answer to a given crisis, so I can be ready to respond quickly?” Why bother with Antifragility? You may be quite happy with the solutions and methods you already have. But if we step back to think about how RTTV solutions can pave the way for antifragile supply chains, PwC has established that companies that have successfully implemented visibility solutions benefit from: 4x more profitability 15% higher on-time delivery, and as such greater customer satisfaction 3x more agility, or supply chain flexibility 1/3 savings in logistics costs ESG compliance: CO2 reduction, traceability, monitoring and reporting. In other words, a RTTV-powered antifragile approach can provide answers to all of the CSCO pain points identified by PwC, namely Expanding ESG Compliance; Evolving technological advances; and Increasing frequency of supply chain disruptions, to name just the top three. It’s a fascinating conversation, which we look forward to continuing with you moving forwards! Book a demo to find out more… You Might Also Like When is a Digital 4.0 MES not a Digital 4.0 MES? Keeping the Wheels Going Round and Round: How San Marcos Unified Uses Technology to Power Safe, Smart School Transportation How to Avoid Lean Implementation Failures? More safety for cyclists through holistic environment detection in road traffic with modern V2X technologies