When supply chain leaders, technology executives, and policymakers gathered at the Digital Supply Chain Institute Executive Leadership Forum in Tokyo on October 14-16, the conversations focused on a common challenge: how organizations can navigate a future shaped by AI, geopolitical uncertainty, and increasing supply chain constraints.
Throughout the forum, attendees participated in a series of live polls that provided a real-time snapshot of executive thinking. While the results reflect the views of forum participants rather than the global supply chain community as a whole, they reveal several trends that are likely to influence leadership decisions in the years ahead.
Growth Opportunities Remain Strong Despite Geopolitical Uncertainty
One of the forum’s most interesting findings was the balance between caution and confidence.
When asked which country in eastern Asia represented the most attractive investment destination over the next five years, respondents overwhelmingly favored Vietnam (32%), followed by Japan (29%) and India (23%). China received just 6% of responses.
These responses suggest that business leaders are pursuing growth opportunities in markets perceived as stable, resilient, and increasingly important to global supply chains.
The Big Challenge for AI Is not the Technology
Much of the forum focused on artificial intelligence, but attendees made it clear that technology itself is not the primary obstacle to adoption.
The largest barriers identified were governance, risk, and compliance concerns (59%), followed by poor data quality (49%) and difficulty demonstrating a clear business case or return on investment (39%).
These responses highlight a shift in the AI conversation. The question is no longer whether AI can create value. Most leaders appear convinced that it can. The challenge now is building the organizational foundation needed to deploy AI responsibly, securely, and effectively.
Human Judgment Still Matters
Despite rapid advances in AI capabilities, attendees indicated that humans remain firmly in control of critical decisions.
Nearly half of respondents (47%) said AI systems currently recommend actions while people make final decisions. Another 42% use AI primarily to generate insights. Only 11% reported allowing AI to automatically execute decisions, even with human review.
This finding reinforces a reality heard repeatedly throughout the forum: organizations increasingly view AI as a decision-support tool rather than a decision-maker. For now, supply chain leaders appear focused on using AI to augment human expertise rather than replace it.
The Skills Gap Is Real
Perhaps the most concerning result involved workforce readiness. Sixty percent of respondents described their organizations as only slightly prepared to meet future AI skills requirements. Just 10% said their workforce was well prepared or very well prepared.
This underscores one of the most pressing challenges facing supply chains today. Technology adoption is accelerating, but workforce development is struggling to keep pace. As organizations invest in AI, success will increasingly depend on whether employees have the skills, training, and confidence needed to work effectively with these new tools.
Building Trust and Resilience
Forum participants also examined the governance and security practices needed to support AI-enabled supply chains.
Continuous monitoring (62%) and secure data-sharing controls (53%) were among the most commonly reported capabilities. However, significantly fewer organizations reported implementing supplier security assessments, multifactor authentication, or formal incident response plans within AI-enabled environments.
The findings suggest that many companies are still in the early stages of building the governance and resilience frameworks necessary to support large-scale AI deployment.
Interestingly, the forum’s final discussion on trust revealed a remarkably consistent answer. Attendees linked trust not to technology, but to behavior. Reliability, transparency, communication, integrity, and consistently delivering on commitments were identified as the primary drivers of trust across supply chain ecosystems.
Looking Ahead
If there was a single message emerging from the Tokyo forum, it was that the future of supply chains will not be defined by technology alone. While AI continues to advance at remarkable speed, leadership, governance, workforce readiness, and trust will ultimately determine which organizations capture value and which fall behind in an increasingly complex global environment.
The executives in Tokyo expressed optimism about the opportunities ahead. But they also acknowledged that realizing those opportunities will require sustained investment in people, processes, and partnerships. The organizations that get that balance right will be best positioned to lead the next phase of supply chain transformation.
The findings also suggest that supply chains are entering a new phase of transformation. The focus is shifting from experimentation to execution, from adopting AI to scaling it responsibly, and from managing individual risks to building enterprise-wide resilience. Organizations that invest now in developing talent, strengthening governance, and fostering trust among partners will be better positioned to navigate disruption and seize emerging opportunities.
