“If you’re as good as you say you are, you should be able to keep your cost structure down, deliver the mission and the outcome, and still make a margin.” - Josh Gruenbaum, Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the GSA

The General Services Administration (GSA), responsible for Federal contracting, has been making DOGE-style headlines of their own this year.

In late June, they sent a letter to a number of large consulting firms under contract, looking for opportunities to reduce spending and better understand the work that is underway. Josh Gruenbaum, who is overseeing the review, specifically requested “No consultant gobbledygook” in the responses. The GSA has signaled a mindset shift from time-and-materials to outcome based contracts, a dynamic that is likely to impact private sector consulting contracts and spending as well.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner looks into this shift and what it will require from all involved parties:

• How the government defines consulting services
• The multi-round outreach process being led by the Federal government and how firms are responding
• How to shift to outcome based agreements and the pressure of AI is likely to change the future of consulting

Links:

• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Art of Supply on YouTube
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“We've had this whole period of trying to manage supply chains for lowest cost, whereas I think now we're managing for resilience at a managed cost and at an acceptable cost.” - Tim Richardson, Founder and CEO, Iter Consulting

Supply chains aren't really chains anymore. They're complex, interconnected networks. 

Supply networks are anything but predictable. What used to be straightforward relationships between suppliers and customers have become webs of interconnected partnerships, each with its own risks and opportunities. The leaders and teams who succeed in this environment understand that optimizing for resilience at a managed cost has fundamentally replaced the old paradigm of chasing the lowest cost… at any price. In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner welcomes Tim Richardson back to the podcast. Tim is the Founder and CEO of Iter Consulting, a global team of experts with supply chain and manufacturing experience that are helping companies navigate the new world order of distributed manufacturing and supply network complexity

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Tim and Kelly discuss: 

• Why we've moved past peak globalization and what "local for local" manufacturing means for supply network design
• How to balance the challenge of mapping supply network complexity against the need to understand cost and risk exposure
• The talent gap in supply chain leadership and why strategic thinking capabilities haven't kept pace with operational demands

Links:

• Tim Richardson on LinkedIn
• Supply Chain Forecast: Volatile with Tim Richardson
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything, and we found, over and over, that precision in the smallest of details translated to precision in the bigger ones.” - Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality

There are a lot of opportunities for crossover learning between running a restaurant and working in procurement or supply chain. Both fields are highly operational and process driven, not to mention measured by known, benchmarkable performance metrics. 

In the book “Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More than They Expect” by Will Guidara, we hear the story of one high-end restaurant’s rise to become the best in the world, but it wasn’t just about the food. They had to master and refine their systems, their approach to the guest experience, and serve amazing food all at the same time.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner shares key lessons from the book and connects them to the challenges and opportunities that procurement and supply chain leaders face today:

• The critical need to pair vision with operational systems that work at scale
• Crafting an exceptional customer experience and training a large team to preserve it
• How successful leaders handle difficult times and even failure

Links:

• Unreasonable Hospitality on Amazon
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“There is a world where we can have a much more dynamic supply chain. Certainly, the current set of brands that are experiencing the squeeze from the tariffs would definitely benefit from being able to pivot their supply chain pretty quickly.” - Anthony Sardain, Founder and CEO of Cavela

For all of the enthusiasm about AI, global sourcing is one of the processes that has remained predominantly human. Between the complexity of specifications and the relationship-based exchanges of information, it has been too ‘messy’ for straight automation - until now.

Anthony Sardain is the founder and CEO of Cavela, a company focused on automating the end-to-end sourcing process. For three generations, his family has been heavily involved in trade. It probably comes as no surprise then that during his graduate studies at McGill University, he focused on developing machine learning and AI models to predict global trade.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner speaks with Anthony about the opportunities associated with (finally) automating global sourcing:

• Building a business model that delivers the value traditionally associated with a service as a product instead
• Why increasing competition from smaller players will increase all companies’ reliance on brand
• How suppliers feel about this new advancement in the manufacturing space

Links:

• Anthony Sardain on LinkedIn
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“Life is short and it ends, the clock is ticking. Don’t get all wrapped up in your personal self, that’s a very unhealthy thing to do.” - Fred Smith, Founder of FedEx (1944 - 2025)

On June 21, 2025, the business world - more specifically the supply chain world - lost a giant. FedEx Founder Fred Smith passed away at the age of 80.

Frederick Wallace Smith was born in Marks, Mississippi in 1944. According to common anecdotes, he first imagined a company that could provide overnight delivery for an economics paper he wrote while studying at Yale in 1965 - and he got a C because the professor thought the idea was implausible.

In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner looks at Fred Smith’s many contributions from five decades in business:

• The risk he had to be willing to take on in pursuit of his vision
• The many innovations that were introduced by FedEx during his tenure
• Why Smith’s perspective on what kind of business FedEx was in was so critical to its success

Links:

• FedEx Ground’s Contractor Woes
• Case Dismissed: Spencer Patton Prevails Over FedEx
• Reading FedEx Ground the RICO Act
• Will FedEx Freight hit the open road?
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“This is a long standing discussion within the networking and security industry: is there a perimeter? I think the reality is the perimeter still exists because it's a data and logical perimeter, but it doesn't exist anymore as a physical perimeter.” - Ken Rutsky, Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka

As the world becomes increasingly digital, ensuring network connectivity and security become parallel objectives that all companies must prioritize. Add in trying to do it as efficiently as possible, and the challenge only grows. 

Ken Rutsky is the Chief Marketing Officer at Aryaka. They recently released their first Network Security Trends in Transportation and Logistics report, part of a series of research efforts looking at network security trends for different industries. 

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Ken joins Kelly Barner to discuss:

• The unique combination of physical and digital security needs that transportation and logistics companies have to satisfy 
• How the cost, complexity, and relative risk associated with network security are being addressed
• Balancing systems integration and also network perimeters to ensure connectivity on the move without taking on undue risk

Links:

• Ken Rutsky on LinkedIn
• 2025 State of Network Security in Transportation & Logistics
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

There have been a number of efforts to regulate a transition to lower logistics-related emissions, and all of them involved the state of California and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

California always plays a unique role in these debates because they have the most air pollution in the country and also the toughest emissions regulations. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) predates the EPA. In the past, they have been able to make their own rules, only requiring waivers when newly proposed standards are tougher than Federal standards. 

On May 22, 2025, the Senate voted to strip California of its ability to impose tougher standards on heavy duty trucks and ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

California may be down, but they are certainly not out. They are using other creative ways to regulate the emissions associated with logistics.

In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner looks at this alternate approach to regulation:

• The Warehouse Actions and Investments to Reduce Emissions Program (known as WAIRE) and the Warehouse Indirect Source Rule (ISR)
• How these rules are are intended to work and how they are being enforced
• Whether this alternative approach will be effective in achieving its objectives

Links:

• Examining the Practicality of the EV Truck Mandate
• Nebraska v. California: The EV Trucking Transition
• Who will decide the future of EV trucking?
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

While true crime has gained traction as a genre in the literary world, it's not often we see it applied to procurement. Yet, a fascinating and unsettling procurement fraud case has recently come to light within Intel Israel's operations. Every criminal investigation seeks to uncover means, motive, and opportunity, and this case checks all three boxes, with implications that go far beyond one company.

Just a few weeks ago, a story broke that uncovered an alleged scheme in which a now-former employee, Natalia Avtsin, and a component supplier, Yefim Tsibolevsky from Energy Electronics 2000, teamed up to steal roughly 3 million Israeli shekels (NIS), or about $842,000 USD. 

Although the case is still ongoing and has yet to see its day in court, it poses a lot of questions for procurement teams across the globe.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers:

• How Avtsin and Tsibolevsky pulled off this alleged fraud
• The process loopholes and absent oversight that allowed them to get away with it for so long
• The many lessons procurement can take from this case regarding checks and balances, pattern detection, and technology use

Links:

• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

After spending years reviewing business books, Kelly Barner knows how to recognize authors who truly move the needle–and Kate Vitasek is one of them. Her latest work, Preventing the Dispute Before It Begins: Proven Mechanisms for Fostering Better Business Relationships, co-authored with James Groton, Ellen Waldman, and Allen Waxman, takes on a surprisingly neglected topic: dispute prevention.

While this topic can be applied to procurement, it’s also very human, looking at business relationships from their most troubled moments and aspiring to lay out a plan as well as offering up resources to help teams and individuals stay away from the trouble. 

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner takes on her first audio book review and covers:

• The difference between handling conflict and proactively preventing issues in the first place
• How certain language, particularly within contracts, can lay the foundation for disputes even before they happen
• Who peacekeepers are and the role they have in strategically averting crises

Links:

• Kate Vitasek on LinkedIn
• Preventing the Dispute Before It Begins: Proven Mechanisms for Fostering Better Business Relationships
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

“In this climate of being a trade professional in Washington, expect to be in an Uber for about half of the day and then the other half of it sitting in rooms making cases of why people either should be not paying tariffs or how other people should be paying tariffs.” - Samir Kapadia, Managing Principal at Vogel Group and Founder and CEO at India Index

Supply chain professionals have always had to keep a close eye on trade–both the policies and the geopolitical happenings that affect it. But with tariffs launching trade-related topics to the top of the news cycle repeatedly since January, all of us - supply chain professionals and otherwise - have learned something new. 

One person who spends a majority of his time right in the thick of it all is Samir Kapadia, Managing Principal at Vogel Group and Founder and CEO at India Index. 

Samir and Kelly Barner have discussed global sourcing and tariffs in the past, but in this interview they take a broader approach, exploring how trade policies and lobbying intersect and what they really mean in today's volatile geopolitical environment.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Samir shares his expertise about the:

• Nuances of trade relationships between companies and governments
• Factors that influence trade agreements and tariffs
• Types of lobbying methods that influence and shape trade practices

Links:

• Samir Kapadia on LinkedIn
• India Index
• The Dawn of a New Era in U.S. Trade Policy
• Evaluating India as a Viable Alternative to China
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter 
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement