Over the past three weeks we looked back at the year in supply chain 2025. I first wrote about what I thought were the biggest or most interesting supply chain stories by month. (See The Top Supply Chain Stories by Month 2025.)
Next we analyzed the performance of supply chain and logistics-related stocks in 2025, based on SCDigest's weekly index. (See Supply Chain and Logistics Stocks Performance 2025.)
Last week, we ran our popular look at Supply Chain 2025 in Numbers and Charts.
Now we start to look forward, with some supply chain predictions for 2026 and beyond. We start with some of what analyst firm Gartner calls "predicts," more specifically its predictions for logistics over the next few years.
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With AI-driven orchestration, storage zones, travel routes and workstations can be reconfigured in real-time according to demand patterns, labor shortage or SKU velocity.
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Kicking things off, Gartner analyst Brock Johns offers this interesting prediction: By 2030, the overall TCO for SaaS logistics applications will increase by at least 40% due to the continued introduction of advanced AI capabilities.
How so?
“SaaS logistics vendors are rapidly embedding advanced AI features (GenAI and agentic AI) to differentiate offerings and meet customer demand for efficiency and agility,” Johns wrote. He then says that “Organizations are underestimating the long-term cost implications of AI-driven SaaS, focusing on short-term productivity gains rather than the cumulative impact on TCO.”
Johns says that part of the challenge for software vendors is gaining an understanding of their true costs of offering these capabilities. For potential customers, two significant challenges arise. The first challenge is determining the practicality and use cases for agentic AI within their organization.
“This also creates complexity in attempting to quantify the potential return on investment (ROI) of agentic AI,” Johns writes.
He says the second challenge is determining the actual volume of agentic AI usage.
Johns also believes the ROI of AI-enabled SaaS logistics applications will become more nuanced.
“Benefits in automation, optimization and efficiency may be offset by increased costs and expenditures for these solutions. As a result, demand will increase for third-party cost benchmarking services and contract negotiation support, which could add further costs to the equation,” John opines.
Among a number of recommendations to deal with this changing landscape. I especially liked this one: Negotiate contracts that provide transparency into AI-related pricing by: establishing caps on annual price increases, clearly delineating premium features, and including negotiating clauses that allow you to cancel or adjust AI consumption levels as needed.
Pricing in an AI world with be complicated for sure.
Next up: Gartner analyst Abdil Tunca offers this prediction: By 2030, the overall TCO for SaaS logistics applications will increase by at least 40% due to the continued introduction of advanced AI capabilities.
 Tunca starts by noting that a 2025 Gartner survey showed that 94% of supply chain leaders have already deployed, or plan to deploy, intralogistics smart robots (ISRs) within the next two years.
That leads to an important point, Tunca notes: ISRs don’t require the same amount of physical space as humans. Beyond retrofitting, this means CSCOs will need to consider, within the design, “how future warehouses can optimize robot efficiency, density and adaptability. This shift will allow for lower long-term costs, smarter operations and flexibility to scale for easy expansion,” Tunca adds.
Tunca correctly observes that conventional warehouses haven’t changed much over time since the racks and slots are set up. And altering them is costly.
“However, robots thrive on flexibility,” Tunca says, “With AI-driven orchestration, storage zones, travel routes and workstations can be reconfigured in real-time according to demand patterns, labor shortage or SKU velocity.”
This new dynamic warehouse paradigm “will continuously self-optimize, transforming fixed infrastructure into a software-managed configuration. Also, fully autonomous facilities won’t even require lighting, heating or even paved floors,” Tunca adds.
Then he concludes with this huge prediction: With robotic vendors offering standardized plug-and-play modules that are adaptable with standardized multiagent orchestration platforms (MAOPs), warehouses will be assembled like code rather than constructed like traditional buildings.
Is this right? Obviously, this would be a seismic development.
Among other recommendations Tunca offers for companies to ride this wave is this: Favor scalable, software-defined robotics over single-purpose automation. Prioritizing adaptable robotics platforms enables warehouses to quickly respond to changing demands and integrate new technology, future-proofing operations against market shifts and reducing the risk of obsolescence.
Very provocative stuff from Tunca indeed.
So there you go, summaries of two predictions from the gurus at Gartner in the supply chain execution domain.
More Gartner predictions in other areas of the supply chain next week as we close this out.
What is your reaction to these Gartner predicts? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
What is your reaction to these predctions? What numbers would you add? Let us know your thought at the Feedback section below:
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