Like the rest of the world, I watched with heartbreak as the conflict in Ukraine began. My heart goes out to people of Ukraine, along with their families and loved ones. You can read Blue Yonder’s full statement here. I also want to be clear that my intention with this blog post is not to capitalize on or romanticize the trauma anyone is facing in this situation.

For those of us who work in global supply chains, we look at these types of situations through a different lens. When we see any type of disruption — like the Suez Canal blockage, the California wildfires or, in this case, the conflict in Ukraine — we immediately ask ourselves, “How can we help ensure essential goods can still get to the right places at the right time?”

And that’s exactly where my mind went as I watched the news in Ukraine unfold.

With my team here at Blue Yonder, we began looking at our customer data to see if we had any impacted customers and how we could quickly offer them support. We identified one customer in particular that had several products that were either produced in the region or shipped in and out of the region to other parts of the world. Upon connecting with them, we learned they had made some executive decisions about their operations in region, but they did not know how these decisions would affect their supply chain — and they were doing it all manually.

Using our AI/ML-powered Luminate Control Tower solution, we were able to quickly create a dashboard for this customer to highlight the downstream impacts of their decisions concerning this region:

  • All the shipments going in or out of the region of conflict
  • Potential customer locations and partner locations that could be impacted
  • The inventory that would be affected
  • A dollar amount associated with these impacts

Situations like this are extremely sensitive, and each customer must decide on their own what is the right course of action. Our only intention is to help provide complete visibility — like the dashboard above — to help them make the best decisions possible.

With circumstances like the conflict in Ukraine, or any disruption, our top priority is to help the global supply chains keep moving so that the world can keep going — even during the most trying times. We believe in using technology for good, and we believe that AI/ML-powered supply chains can offer end-to-end visibility to help our customers make clear and confident decisions.

Like the rest of the global community, we hope to see an immediate, peaceful end to the conflict in Ukraine, and we are committed to doing our part. In addition to helping keep supply chains moving, Blue Yonder is matching associate contributions to support the humanitarian efforts of World Central Kitchen in the affected areas. And we invite you to donate via this link: wck.org/blueyonder.