Who really controls the modern supply chain?
30 Apr 20266 min read
Summary
- Despite advances in AI, platforms, and control towers, real control still surfaces when capacity is tight—where asset owners decide allocation, timing, and pricing based on commercial leverage rather than planned optimization.
- Technology enhances coordination and decision readiness, but it does not override real-world constraints like limited capacity, contract flexibility, or disruption-driven repricing.
- As supply chains become more digitized, performance increasingly depends on how well data, incentives, and decision rights are structured across shippers, platforms, and asset owners—particularly in less mature markets.
In the age of AI, platforms, and control towers, actual supply chain control still reveals itself not in planning rooms, but in moments of scarcity: when asset owners decide what moves, when, and at what price.
For years, visibility, transparency and resilience, tantamount to supply chain control, have been the holy grail of planners, supply chain and logistics professionals alike. Over the past 30 years, gaining control of the supply chain has taken many shapes and forms, from track-and-trace , to comprehensive dashboards, to full-blown Supply Chain (4PL) Control Towers. The benefits promised and sometimes delivered: visibility, transparency and risk mitigation, producing resilience.
In these days with digitization and AI being in everyone’s inbox, it begs the question: who is really controlling the modern supply chain now? For the purpose of this article, we define control as decision rights and commercial leverage.
Traditionally, arguably it was the asset owner (ships, airlines, trucks, ports, warehouse) who decided on who to service and at what price, giving them the ultimate control over what cargo moved when.
There are some who contend, with the growing establishment of digital platforms this has changed. IBM describes a supply chain control tower as a connected view of data and events that helps organizations “understand, prioritize and resolve critical issues in real time”. The digital visibility, given the right processes and people capabilities, will enable the organization to speed up decision-taking and risk mitigation.
Furthermore, if we bring the rising AI developments into the picture, as the technology matures, we can expect this decision taking, risk mitigation to further shape in terms of speed, summarising comprehensive data analysis into faster, decision-ready distillations. The dream of supply chain control has entered a revived era.
And yet, despite all the above advancements, when push comes to shove and demand outstrips supply, the asset owner continues to firmly hold the final decision on where to deploy their asset – and at which price. Everyone whose cargo has been offloaded at the last minute due to space capacity understands this. To illustrate this, the Red Sea Crisis served as a sharp reminder of how fast contractual rates can be voided, surcharges applied, and space bartered to the highest bidder.
While this rate increase was explainable to a certain extent to the shippers, the pricing hike continued well beyond the actual crisis the keen observers noted. If we look a bit closer to home, those familiar with the Thailand trucking market will recall the capacity constraints in the first quarter of 2025. Due to compounding demand of an unexpected high fresh fruit harvest, trucking rates spiked and trucking companies selected to service the higher-paying loads, abandoning non-binding agreements.
The contractual enforceability of providing capacity at pre-agreed pricing is a heavy influencer on the power of the asset owner to remain in control of the supply chain.
In the above scenarios, no matter the level of planning gone into the supply chain, the IBPs and S&OPs, once the asset owner controls the market, the decisions are taken at that end. Which production order goes into the factory floor first, which truck gets deployed for the pick-up, which container gets priority loading at the port and onto the ship, whose customs declarations are cleared first and whose deliveries are executed in sequence – all of this will be deployed in favour of commercial considerations of the asset owner.
Of course, aside from commercial optimisation, asset owners may also have other considerations such as balancing networks and maintaining long-term relationships with their core customers. However, this will only apply to a limited number of companies seeking services.
As control shifts with the demand and supply scenario, then the real strategic question is not who owns the assets but how decision rights, incentives, and data are designed to function when markets turn. As the above also works in the contrary direction, and in favour of the shipper.
This is where visibility and automation of processes allow for greater control and improved cost-to-serve. If the supply of assets on the market are readily available, then the digital platform can choose and execute at the best possible rate, target delivery dates and pit the asset owners against each other.
The speed and ease with which shippers move their products, merchandise is arguably a dominant factor in the commercial success or downfall of a company in a producing industry. The World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2023 Report emphasised the improvements achieved in the past years, due to the digitisation of documentation and processes, with a focus on port operations.
If we turn our sights closer to home, specifically the immensely fragmented logistics landscape of Southeast Asia, digitising logistics processes would have a significant impact on improving lead-times, improving companies’ commercial performance. Many of the delays impacting lead-times are the hand-offs, documentation mismatches and revalidation and paper-required processes. While the UNESCAP–ASEAN Secretariat report (2025) finds ASEAN is continuously improving, it estimates that full adoption of digital trade facilitation (seamless electronic exchange) would reduce trade costs by nearly 7.5%.
When implementing digitised supply chain processes, one challenge is the legacy systems many companies still struggle with. This impacts the streamlining and speed of exchange of the data, with data being “translated” with middleware and several “sources of truth” creating misaligned data points which impact the operability of the decision proposals. Incentives of the supply chain partners should be linked not only to their operational performance but also to their digital contribution into the data ecosystem the shipper (cargo owner) or their assigned 4PL are creating.
The other obstacle is the level of digitalisation supply chain partners have and are willing to invest in. In many markets in SEA, the level of digitalisation of the asset owners is still in its infancy. Companies providing easy access into their digital ecosystem will be able to improve their access into the asset owner network to prevail in situations where demand outstrips capacity.
Having the data, the insights and the prediction model is only one part of the equation. The process and data governance is just as important, to ensure contractually agreed performance can be assessed accurately.
Which leaves us with the question: how can shippers align incentives with their supply chain partners, especially in times of resource scarcity and in locations where contractual enforcement is ineffective? Would incentivising supply chain actors to join and relinquish control into an intelligent ecosystem be the solution?
For years, visibility, transparency and resilience, tantamount to supply chain control, have been the holy grail of planners, supply chain and logistics professionals alike. Over the past 30 years, gaining control of the supply chain has taken many shapes and forms, from track-and-trace , to comprehensive dashboards, to full-blown Supply Chain (4PL) Control Towers. The benefits promised and sometimes delivered: visibility, transparency and risk mitigation, producing resilience.
In these days with digitization and AI being in everyone’s inbox, it begs the question: who is really controlling the modern supply chain now? For the purpose of this article, we define control as decision rights and commercial leverage.
Traditionally, arguably it was the asset owner (ships, airlines, trucks, ports, warehouse) who decided on who to service and at what price, giving them the ultimate control over what cargo moved when.
There are some who contend, with the growing establishment of digital platforms this has changed. IBM describes a supply chain control tower as a connected view of data and events that helps organizations “understand, prioritize and resolve critical issues in real time”. The digital visibility, given the right processes and people capabilities, will enable the organization to speed up decision-taking and risk mitigation.
Furthermore, if we bring the rising AI developments into the picture, as the technology matures, we can expect this decision taking, risk mitigation to further shape in terms of speed, summarising comprehensive data analysis into faster, decision-ready distillations. The dream of supply chain control has entered a revived era.
And yet, despite all the above advancements, when push comes to shove and demand outstrips supply, the asset owner continues to firmly hold the final decision on where to deploy their asset – and at which price. Everyone whose cargo has been offloaded at the last minute due to space capacity understands this. To illustrate this, the Red Sea Crisis served as a sharp reminder of how fast contractual rates can be voided, surcharges applied, and space bartered to the highest bidder.
While this rate increase was explainable to a certain extent to the shippers, the pricing hike continued well beyond the actual crisis the keen observers noted. If we look a bit closer to home, those familiar with the Thailand trucking market will recall the capacity constraints in the first quarter of 2025. Due to compounding demand of an unexpected high fresh fruit harvest, trucking rates spiked and trucking companies selected to service the higher-paying loads, abandoning non-binding agreements.
The contractual enforceability of providing capacity at pre-agreed pricing is a heavy influencer on the power of the asset owner to remain in control of the supply chain.
In the above scenarios, no matter the level of planning gone into the supply chain, the IBPs and S&OPs, once the asset owner controls the market, the decisions are taken at that end. Which production order goes into the factory floor first, which truck gets deployed for the pick-up, which container gets priority loading at the port and onto the ship, whose customs declarations are cleared first and whose deliveries are executed in sequence – all of this will be deployed in favour of commercial considerations of the asset owner.
Of course, aside from commercial optimisation, asset owners may also have other considerations such as balancing networks and maintaining long-term relationships with their core customers. However, this will only apply to a limited number of companies seeking services.
As control shifts with the demand and supply scenario, then the real strategic question is not who owns the assets but how decision rights, incentives, and data are designed to function when markets turn. As the above also works in the contrary direction, and in favour of the shipper.
This is where visibility and automation of processes allow for greater control and improved cost-to-serve. If the supply of assets on the market are readily available, then the digital platform can choose and execute at the best possible rate, target delivery dates and pit the asset owners against each other.
The speed and ease with which shippers move their products, merchandise is arguably a dominant factor in the commercial success or downfall of a company in a producing industry. The World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2023 Report emphasised the improvements achieved in the past years, due to the digitisation of documentation and processes, with a focus on port operations.
If we turn our sights closer to home, specifically the immensely fragmented logistics landscape of Southeast Asia, digitising logistics processes would have a significant impact on improving lead-times, improving companies’ commercial performance. Many of the delays impacting lead-times are the hand-offs, documentation mismatches and revalidation and paper-required processes. While the UNESCAP–ASEAN Secretariat report (2025) finds ASEAN is continuously improving, it estimates that full adoption of digital trade facilitation (seamless electronic exchange) would reduce trade costs by nearly 7.5%.
When implementing digitised supply chain processes, one challenge is the legacy systems many companies still struggle with. This impacts the streamlining and speed of exchange of the data, with data being “translated” with middleware and several “sources of truth” creating misaligned data points which impact the operability of the decision proposals. Incentives of the supply chain partners should be linked not only to their operational performance but also to their digital contribution into the data ecosystem the shipper (cargo owner) or their assigned 4PL are creating.
The other obstacle is the level of digitalisation supply chain partners have and are willing to invest in. In many markets in SEA, the level of digitalisation of the asset owners is still in its infancy. Companies providing easy access into their digital ecosystem will be able to improve their access into the asset owner network to prevail in situations where demand outstrips capacity.
Having the data, the insights and the prediction model is only one part of the equation. The process and data governance is just as important, to ensure contractually agreed performance can be assessed accurately.
Which leaves us with the question: how can shippers align incentives with their supply chain partners, especially in times of resource scarcity and in locations where contractual enforcement is ineffective? Would incentivising supply chain actors to join and relinquish control into an intelligent ecosystem be the solution?
About Nicole Tretwer
Nicole is a result-driven and solutions-oriented leader with a University of Manchester MBA. She has over 20 years of experience in a broad range of roles in business management. She’s interested in digitizing supply chains, finding out the latest in tech, and how to apply it in a real-life business environment.