Gartner’s 2025 Supply Chain Tech Trends; CPG & Retail’s Roadmap & Roadblocks
This year’s supply chain trends lean heavily on automation, connectivity, and (no surprise) AI. Gartner’s predictions put technologies such as agentic AI, ambient invisible intelligence, and an augmented connected workforce at the top of the list for supply chain leaders looking to optimize operations.
The benefits could bring opportunities to support digital value realization, enhance workforce productivity, and deliver new innovative operating models for supply chain technology leaders and chief supply chain officers, Gartner reports.
Below are the top trends in supply chain technology for 2025, some of which we’re seeing play out in consumer goods already.
1. Agentic AI
Perhaps the most anticipated as it has quickly become the latest buzzword in AI, agentic technologies will bring increased autonomy to virtual workforces, allowing AI agents to make decisions that can increase supply chain efficiency and adaptability. One such use case includes optimizing inventory management by autonomously adjusting stock levels in response to real-time demand predictions, per Gartner.
In a supply chain strategy predictions report, Gartner said it anticipated that by 2028, 15% of day-to-day supply chain decisions would be made autonomously by AI agents, freeing up humans to focus more on critical decisions.
While full automation is the North Star of this technology, Christian Titze, VP analyst and chief of research in Gartner’s supply chain practice, said this will not become a reality in 2025. In present day, it’s more about decision augmentation than decision automation, he tells CGT.
Few consumer goods companies have embarked on this journey as of yet, but Tapestry is among those making investments that will pave the way for implementation.
The company is looking to better structure its data within AI models. It hopes to give employees easy access to public information through form auto-completes and AI-driven chat responses — with the tech understanding context around sales, inventory orders, traffic, corporate hierarchy, etc. A related pilot is about 90% complete and will provide the stepping stones needed, eliminating prompt returns with incorrect information because the model didn’t understand the context around the inquiries submitted, per Karthik Ramakrishan, director of planning systems and RPA at Tapestry.
2. Autonomous Data Collection
The industry is also likely to see autonomous technology within data collection processes as well, with drones and mobile robots being used in warehouses to check inventory, eliminating discrepancies related to manual counts and expediting processes.
3. Decision Intelligence (DI)
DI technology brings together AI, decision modeling, and analytics to support and automate decision making. Supply chain leaders will be using this technology to better understand the decisions being made by tools and improve them based on feedback.
4. Ambient Invisible Intelligence
Real-time monitoring tools with sensing capabilities will help enable end-to-end supply chain visibility. The smart tags and sensors are a low-cost lift for monitoring perishable goods while meeting environmental regulations through improved traceability.
“I think we're finally to that tipping point where RFID tags have become cheap enough, ubiquitous enough. Most retailers have a bunch of stuff in their store already, wood tags … they don't even know it,” Matthew Guiste, global retail technology strategist at Zebra told CGT at NRF’s Big Show in January. “So once that happens, just getting the readers makes it so you can know where your things are, down to a very close location, which helps for things like SKU counting, picking up an order for curbside pickup, etc.”
5. Augmented Connected Workforce (ACWF)
Companies will look to digitize the supply chain workforce, tapping ACWF tools for more accurate decision-making and accelerated processes, including employee onboarding. The technology will also be used to improve productivity levels in manufacturing and logistics operations.
ACWF can bring together technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI.
“When generative AI came along, we saw an opportunity to add a conversational experience to workforce management, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it because almost all of our users are desk-less workers,” Sanish Mondkar, CEO of Legion Technologies told CGT at NRF’s Big Show in January. “So the best way for them to engage with workforce management software and get complex things executed is by having a conversation and saying, 'I need this shift to change and AI will do it for you,' or 'I need this timesheet to be approved and AI will do it for you.'”
6. Multimodal UI
These tools give way to capabilities such as voice-activated controls and gesture-based interfaces. It will allow system users to improve supply chain communication, improving productivity in areas like logistics and used to boost driver safety rates.
7. Polyfunctional Robots
Multitasking is taking on a new meaning with polyfunctional robots that can take on multiple roles. They can perform tasks such as sorting and packaging with a lower rate of human intervention.
Oxford Industries, which owns such brands as Tommy Bahama, Lilly Pulitzer, and Johnny Was, recently deployed more than 450 robots in a distribution center to support receiving, decanting, sorting, packing, and outbound shipping, offering end-to-end automation through a Next Generation Skypod picking system.
8. Intelligent Simulation
By incorporating AI and machine learning, supply chain leaders will be able to elevate traditional approaches to simulation, using predictive capabilities to enable improved decision making. For example, this can be used to optimize logistics routes and warehouse layouts to lower costs and boost efficiency, per Gartner.
Cost, Talent & Alignment Are Key Considerations
The three core areas consumer goods leaders will need to consider as they look to apply these technologies are cost, talent, and alignment, according to Claudia Clemens, senior director and analyst at Gartner’s supply chain practice.
While high investment costs and rising labor costs are top concerns for CPGs amid persistent inflation, she says, most companies are leveraging digital solutions with the primary goal of saving costs and growing revenue. And obstacles related to aging infrastructure are pushing them to digitize faster.
Excluding basic costs and inflation, 55% of participants surveyed by Gartner expect overall new investments to increase up to five percent in the next fiscal year.
One third of consumer products companies express concerns over aging and obsolete existing technologies that are becoming more fragile compared to just 25% from other industries.
A growing skills gap is also putting pressure on companies to upskill and reskill talent to keep up with supply chain goals as the pace of technology continues to accelerate and evolve. Combine this with poor organizational alignment (either from lagging digital roadmaps or poor leadership alignment) and it can be difficult to achieve end-to-end supply chain orchestration and synchronicity, suggests Clemens.
Strong alignment, she says, can help mitigate conflict when it comes to prioritization, preventing disruptions from taking focus away from long-term value projects.
“With these challenges and motivations as a backdrop, CPG companies have these top deciding factors shaping how they select the right technology solutions: One, the ability to integrate with other internal and external systems; two, composability and customization of solutions — meaning the frameworks can be assembled to fit the company needs; three, cybersecurity; four, usability,” says Clemens.
