A team from Blue Yonder recently attended the Finished Vehicle Logistics North America 2025 (FVL NA 2025) conference in Huntington Beach, California.

Nearly 500 registered attendees gathered to learn, share, connect, and discuss innovations and best practices — including auto OEM’s, auto tier 1 suppliers, , car haulers, logistics services providers (LSPs), policymakers, software vendors, and rail, shipping and port providers. In all, over 200 companies were represented. Executives from General Motors, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan and Subaru were among the featured speakers.

The timing for the event couldn’t have been better, as the North American automotive industry has faced incredible volatility in the past three months — including on-again off-again tariffs, changing policies and targets for electric vehicle (EV) adoption, and whiplashing consumer demand for new cars and trucks. Amid this volatility, it’s increasingly difficult to predict finished vehicle logistics demand, let alone optimize logistics for cost and service.

We’re in this together: The growing importance of the network

The official theme for the event was “Disrupt the Status Quo,” and its goal was “highlighting the measures manufacturers and logistics providers have taken to raise the network’s performance despite rising supply chain complexity.”

It’s important to notice the use of the word “network” in that goal statement provided by Automotive Logistics, the conference organizer. It was a word the team at Blue Yonder heard repeated many times over two days. It’s clear that the automotive industry is shifting from a focus on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) supply chain optimization to a broader focus on optimizing the entire network ecosystem, with its multiple supplier tiers — including those partners involved in finished vehicle logistics. To enhance supply chain resiliency, suggested strategies included forming strategic partnerships, strengthening collaboration with logistics providers, and potentially internalizing 3PL/4PL services to reduce transportation and warehousing costs while increasing control over logistics operations.

In a more stable market environment, OEMs and their transportation providers might have had a more distant relationship, centered on rate negotiation. But today the world’s automotive supply chain participants are disrupting the status quo by creating closer partnerships based on collaboration, real-time visibility, transparency and data-sharing. After all, it’s in the interest of every stakeholder to maximize awareness and predictability in today’s unpredictable industry landscape.

End-to-end network optimization took center stage at FVL NA 2025

Erin Murphy, Blue Yonder’s VP for Solution Advising, Automotive & Industrial Manufacturing,participated in a keynote panel discussion on the mainstage at FVL NA 2025.

The expert panel also featured Darren Acker from Glovis America, Todd Myers from Nissan and Adrien Jennings from Cognosos. Called “Meeting Complexity Head-On: Engineering a Flexible Vehicle Logistics Network,” the session centered on how fast- changing priorities in the industry are driving a shift from reactive, isolated supply chains to resilient, connected supply networks.

“Our discussion leaned in heavily on end-to-end connectivity, what-if scenario capabilities, and agile, adaptive decision-making,” says Murphy. “With all the uncertainty in the market due to tariffs, demand variability and geopolitical changes, KPIs are shifting — driving a need for flexibility across the network.”

Fittingly, just as the conference kicked off on April 9, U.S. President Donald Trump made a new announcement that only emphasized the need for network-level agility and resilience.

“Just before the panelists went on stage, the newest round of tariffs was put on hold for 90 days,” Murphy notes. “The sudden announcement highlighted just how unpredictable the market is right now — and how OEMs need to incrementally reoptimize and replan across the network, at much quicker cadences, based on this new reality. There’s simply no time to replan the whole network using traditional approaches to planning, collaboration, data management and analysis. As the conference theme suggests, it really is time to disrupt the status quo.”

Real-time, network-wide connectivity: A new industry imperative

So what exactly should OEMs do? How can they forge closer partnerships — based on real-time connectivity across the network — to manage volatility and disrupt their traditional, reactive, siloed ways of working together?

The solution is Blue Yonder Platform. Backed by its industry-leading supply chain solutions, decades of experience in the auto industry, and hundreds of customer successes, Blue Yonder developed its dedicated, purpose-built Platform to help modernize and connect complex, multi-tier, multi-enterprise networks.

Blue Yonder Platform provides a unified data cloud and a holistic, end-to-end platform where automotive trading partners can seamlessly collaborate, plan, execute and re-execute as market conditions change. All participants — including LSPs and carriers — share real-time awareness and visibility, enhancing their ability to pivot as part of a fluid, dynamic network.

Blue Yonder Platform doesn’t just gather data, it applies advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to help draw conclusions, create action plans and generate more predictable outcomes.

“The application of AI and ML was one of the key topics during our panel discussion at FVL NA 2025,” says Murphy. “While it’s great to centralize and unify data across the network, the real advantage lies in applying it to make better decisions, as a network. Blue Yonder Platform positions end-to-end automotive supply chain partners to quickly gain insights, run what-if scenarios, make informed trade-offs, and drive smart, profitable execution across the entire ecosystem.” 

“In today’s complex, disrupted industry landscape, there’s just no way to pivot agilely across the network without a collaborative digital platform like Blue Yonder,” Murphy points out. “Manual analysis, isolated systems and point solutions, spreadsheets and human cognition are insufficient to manage an OEM’s internal supply chain today, let alone a large network that includes many layers of trading partners and suppliers.”

“With Blue Yonder, not only are tariffs, demand shifts and other events identified quickly, but all stakeholders can be confident that resolution plans are optimal — because they’re driven by AI, ML and real-time data. The keys to network resilience are moving quickly, and moving intelligently. Blue Yonder Platform enables both,” Murphy concludes.

Ready to start increasing your results at the network level?  Learn more about Blue Yonder’s comprehensive capabilities for automotive manufacturers — or contact us to discuss your challenges one-on-one.