Tariffs are disruptive, but Volker Albrecht, chief executive officer of Siemens Digital Logistics, is confident that supply chain managers will deal with them as successfully as they have so many other disruptions in recent years.
Albrecht says the European view of President Trump’s tariffs is less emotional than what he sees in the U.S. The volatility of tariffs is just one more supply chain disruption that managers will have to weather, he says. They did that with the pandemic, the Suez Canal blockage and with so many other obstacles. “[Tariffs] are just a disruption, and hopefully a lot of our customers learned some lessons from the last disruptions,” he says. “And something you should always have on the radar: there will be the next disruption, whatever it is.”
However, he says, there’s a difference this time. “There’s the immediate effect on the consumer, not when it comes to supply chain, but when it comes to pricing of different goods.” As a consequence, leaders need to consider what changes they can immediately effect in their supply chains to offset costs they may have to pass along to customers.
Albrecht is more reserved about the role of artificial intelligence than are some colleagues. It’s here to stay, he says, but it’s “hyped.” He acknowledges that there’s a lot of development going in with the technology, but he sees no “killer application” yet.
“And you can ask the question,” he says, “what is different about it from machine learning, where we have seen it in network designs and optimization already for years, almost decades? Is AI just the next evolution, or is it really a revolution at the moment?”
Nevertheless, he sees promise in agentic AI. It will be highly influential and eventually bring “massive change” in the supply chain, he says.