Closing the Decision Gap in Volatile Supply Chains - with & Prasad Mahajan of Optilogic and Dr. Gopalendu Pal of Target

**SPEAKER_1** (0:12)
Welcome everyone to the Emerge AI in Business Podcast. Today's guests are Dr. Gopalendu Pal, Director of Operations at Target, and Prasad Mahajan, Senior Director of Customer Engagement at Optilogic. Dr. Pal and Prasad join Emerge CEO and Head of Research Daniel Faggella on today's episode to explain why volatility has become the baseline operating condition for supply chains, and why the executive priority is shrinking the time between sensing disruption and adjusting operations. They underscore how outdated assumptions, siloed KPIs and fragmented data impede responsiveness, and why preparedness now depends on scenario analysis, stronger data foundations and human-guided use of AI to evaluate options with speed and accuracy. Today's episode is sponsored by Optilogic. Just a quick note for our audience that the views expressed by Dr. Gopalendu Pal on today's program do not reflect that of target or its leadership. Getting in front of enterprise AI bias is not about impressions, it's about trust. At Emerge, we help AI vendors engage decision-makers through research-driven content and conversations that matter in the buying process. To learn the exact strategies we use to help leading AI brands and startups connect with their ideal enterprise AI bias, visit emerge.com/ad1. That's emerj.com/ad1.
Now the conversation with Dr. Follon Prasad.

**Daniel Faggella** (1:51)
So Prasad and Dr. G, thank you so much for being here.

**Gopalendu Pal** (1:53)
It's our pleasure, nice to meet you guys.

**Daniel Faggella** (1:55)
Yes, we've got plenty to unpack in a space that's changed a heck of a lot in the last five years since COVID, and it continues to change very, very rapidly. So Prasad, I'm going to pick on you first and kind of set the table. We'll get Dr. G's take on the same question. But if I kind of get your high level take on what the most pressing challenges are that supply chain leaders are facing for kind of the volatility in their operating environment. There's so many factors, we could talk geopolitical, we could talk technical, there's many different things. When you look in the market and see where the frustrations are from your vantage point working with a lot of different companies, what jumps out to you? What's important right now?

**Prasad Mahajan** (2:26)
Yeah, so I think as you can tell, everything going around the globe started with 2013, you know, when we had this ice storms and things like that, then we had COVID and now, you know, lately, port strikes and sometimes you have this hormones issue. The volatility is really around us and it has created a new environment and leaders are really facing challenges on. The big question is really how to react. And then the fear is, am I prepared to react? And the best thing would be to be in a position to act. That means you are prepared for that volatility. So taking a step back, you know, volatility really, there's a distinction, right? Volatility is kind of bi-directional and it may lead to a stronger disruption or not. And a disruption typically means you are having a new norm and typically people adjust to that new normal, even if it is temporary. In a volatile environment, it is bi-directional fluctuation. So the prices are going up, they're coming down, they're going up, they're coming down. Tariffs are at 50%, they're back at 15%.
So you have to really, cannot just calibrate to a new normal. And there is no normal to recalibrate. So you're planning horizons. So that's one of the biggest challenges. Your planning horizon keeps resetting and companies that are pre-qualified, right? Like, for example, when tariffs hit last year, there were some companies that had pre-qualified alternate country suppliers and they were more prepared to act. And so they were able to overcome those challenges very easily. There's other five or six places where these challenges show up in, typically in breaking down of decisions. One is really your assumption layers. You know, all these decision support systems, even the replenishment systems, everything is forecast based. And there are so many assumptions that have been built into those systems that don't really are relevant when it comes to volatility and disruptions, right? Some planning, most planning systems are optimizing against constraints that haven't been questioned in all those years. You know, what is the, has my supplier mix been optimized? My assumptions on lead times are static. So the system looks stable under an environment. And then if the environment moves suddenly, then you realize, oh, you're planning in a box that no longer fits my current world. And then the other challenge is that when all of this kind of results in an impact to the customers, so fulfillment breaks, late shipments, talk outs, missed service level agreements, the root cause is really two or three decision backs, and you're solving forecasting problems at the warehouse doors, right?