On June 18, 2023, the OceanGate TITAN, a submersible on its way to the Titanic wreck site, imploded, killing all five passengers, including OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush.

There were a number of factors leading to this tragic event, including a horrible disregard of basic safety measures, a deliberate effort to work outside of regulatory and inspection protocols, and a toxic company culture.

While many of these issues were internal, OceanGate did not make the TITAN or its predecessors in-house. This means that they had suppliers, and those companies had a front row seat to what was unfolding.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers the OceanGate operation from a supply chain point of view:

• OceanGate's evolutionary journey – first to buy and retrofit their submersibles and then to build them
• The different suppliers that played a role in manufacturing the TITAN, and signs that the company was looking for alternatives
• The challenge presented by innovation that seems to defy convention. When is an idea truly groundbreaking, and when is it just reckless?

Links:

• Marine Board's Report Into the Implosion of the Submersible TITAN in the North Atlantic Ocean Near the Wreck Site of the RMS TITANIC Resulting in the Loss of Five Lives on June 18, 2023
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

"No trucking company in the history of trucking companies has ever made money if their wheels aren't moving basically all the time." - Sean Devine, Founder and CEO, XBE

When costs are high and competition is tight, how companies think about opportunities and challenges determines how successful they will be.

They must deal with the never-ending push and pull between procurement and sales, the role of operational planning, and demand that alternates between peaks and troughs, but the big question is always the same: Is your core business as profitable as it could be?

Sean Devine is the Founder and CEO of XBE, and Sean Correll is their General Manager of Heavy Logistics. XBE is an operations platform focused on heavy materials, logistics, and construction. Their customers build and maintain roads, manufacture with concrete and asphalt, and mine and transport aggregate – expensive, asset-intensive activities.

Starting with the need to maximize asset utilization, and then transitioning into how the most strategic business decisions are made, this conversation applies far beyond heavy logistics.

Kelly, Sean, and Sean discuss:

• How to optimize owned v. hired logistics capacity
• The many different levers that can turn a good operation into a great one
• Understanding the cost of an opportunity, as well as buy-side competition
• Why we all need to resist the temptation to run towards even the best answers

"Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary." - Austrian Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1950)

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was recently awarded to Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University, Philippe Aghion, who is affiliated with universities in France and the U.K., and Peter Howitt, a professor of economics at Brown University.

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt worked together for decades to develop and publish a model that makes it possible to better understand business growth - but not just any growth. The growth fueled by Creative Destruction.

Creative Destruction was first described by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 in response to ideas from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. In fact, Marx thought, and Schumpeter agreed, that it would lead to the end of capitalism… they just didn't agree on why.

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

• What Creative Destruction is, and why it is no ordinary form of growth
• How the idea is connected to the potential end of capitalism
• Why it is so fascinating that this idea is being highlighted at this moment in time, with the rise of AI right before us.

Links:

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

When it comes to moving freight long distances, you can go from ship to drayage to rail to over-the-road trucking… or you can go intermodal.

Intermodal freight transportation combines the advantages of sea, air, and land transport to facilitate a preplanned end-to-end journey. Understanding the relative cost, security, and emissions benefits of intermodal transportation is key for companies looking for the most efficient way to move their goods.

In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner is joined by Anne Reinke, the CEO and President of the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA). Anne has experience lobbying for the rail industry and working at the Department of Transportation, as well as with an organization representing 3PLs.

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

• How the relative roles of private companies and government agencies vary by mode of transportation
• Which factors are most influential in driving demand for intermodal transportation
• How tariffs are changing shipper behavior, altering the usual seasonal patterns for transportation peaks and lows

Links:

• Anne Reinke on LinkedIn
• Intermodal Association of North America
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

Global trading of steel, lumber, and rare earth minerals makes our companies and industries and economies work. And yet, right up there with those examples is an agricultural commodity many people don't like and won't eat: soybeans.

Soybeans are a huge focus of the trade talks between the U.S. and China, and there is a lot at stake between now and the end of the year, especially for U.S. soybean farmers.

China has been actively diversifying their sources of soybeans away from the United States, and they have developed at least two viable alternatives: Brazil and Argentina. The U.S. has less actively (and only lately) started diversifying their customer base for exported soybeans, leaving farmers with a bumper crop and no one to sell it to.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers the soybean supply chain and its intersection with geopolitics:

• Starting with an overview of the global soybean market and how soybean trade is being affected by tariffs
• Why soybean farmers are upset with the country of Argentina - and the Federal government
• How the United States actually took soybean production away from China in the 1950s and 1960s, but now stands to lose their place as a prominent global source

Links:

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

On September 25, 2025, Kodiak, an autonomous truck software company founded in 2018, went public with a $2.5 Billion valuation.

Unlike other companies that make the whole truck autonomous, Kodiak retrofits existing equipment with their sensors and software. Also, unlike other companies in their space… they have revenue, something that is a challenge in any emerging industry.

In 2024, Kodiak became the first company to announce the delivery of a driverless semi-truck to a paying customer, but I think everyone has the same question: will it work? That goes for both Kodiak's solution and their business model.

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

• Reviews how the Kodiak model works and what makes it different – including how they generate revenue
• Explains where they already have trucks in operation and how that is going, as well as the military investment that infused them with the capital required to grow
• And finally, she tries to answer the question 'Will it work long term?' from an operational and investment point of view

Links:

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

In conversations about reshoring, people usually assume that it means building or retrofitting facilities for U.S. manufacturing, bringing in equipment, and hiring people to operate it.

But what if that isn't what it is going to look like at all?

The costs and uncertainty associated with tariffs may be changing attitudes about global trade enough that 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, will get its long-speculated opportunity in the spotlight.

3D printing has advantages and disadvantages, and requires a completely different supply management mindset than importing parts. There are also early signs that AI and the rise of "digital inventories" could change the paradigm yet again, giving companies a whole new set of variables to optimize.

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

• How 3D printing (or additive manufacturing) is being used today, and what the benefits and risks are
• What we know about the domestic supply chain for 3D printers and parts
• How the concept of digital inventories may shift the paradigm yet again
• Insights from a brand new research project that seeks to calculate a more accurate cost for each 3D printed project

Links:

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

"Werner Enterprises wishes to clarify that we are not involved in any agreements of discussions regarding the recruitment of Kenyan truck drivers to the United States. Any claims suggesting otherwise are just false." - Werner Enterprises on X, September 9, 2025

In early September, rumors started to swirl that Werner Enterprises, a $3 Billion transportation and logistics company based in Omaha, Nebraska, was bringing people from Kenya to drive for them in the United States.

The rumors aren't completely based on speculation. Delegations from Kenya and the Nebraska Secretary of State's office have been going back and forth for over a year.

Werner and their CEO have publicly denied the rumors, and the Governor of Nebraska has clarified the limitations of the Secretary of State's office, but only digging into the details can separate fact from fiction.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner pulls together the facts as she found them:

• Reviewing the timeline - a critical piece of this story
• Pictures that seem to have been worth more than a thousand words
• Who said what when, including representatives of the Federal government
• The lessons we can all learn from what happened

Links:

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

"It's also important to note that while our stores are fulfilling more digital orders it's not coming at the cost of in-store sales…our stores as hubs strategy isn't putting our core business at risk. It's simply helping us grow faster." - Brian Cornell, Target CEO, in 2019

In August, Target announced that they would be backing away from their 'stores as hubs' program. The program started in 2017 and used dedicated spaces in the backrooms of regular Target stores to fulfill the company's digital orders.

The 'stores as hubs' program was rolled out with huge fanfare… and a massive $7 Billion investment… so why has Target changed their mind?

Their explanation for the change is that they need to focus more on the in-store shopping experience, but it could also be that true omnichannel retail fulfillment is harder to deliver against than they thought.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner considers the roll out and then roll back of Target's 'stores as hubs' program:

• How the program worked, and what the incentives were to keep it going
• The challenges Target ran into as well as the successes they had under their omnichannel strategy
• What we know about how they plan to handle digital order fulfillment moving forward

Links:

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

If you want to operate a truck over 26,000 pounds, earn money for doing it, and cross state lines… then you need to have a Commercial Driver's License (CDL).

Truck drivers are essential to the economy, and so having a CDL is a real asset. It offers job security and flexibility, as well as solid earnings and great benefits. In fact, CDLs are so valuable that even people who haven't earned one are willing to break the rules to get one.

But having unqualified commercial drivers on the road is a danger to everyone.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers the right way and the wrong way to get a CDL:

• Safety statistics associated with large trucks and their drivers
• How to get a CDL and what the pass/fail rate is
• Recent news stories that illustrate what can go wrong when the administration of CDLs is not handled properly or when licensed drivers aren't qualified

Links:

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