Making networks aligned, adaptable, and agile

“Supply chains today are less chains and more globally connected networks,” according to Kedar Kulkarni, CEO of Strum AI. He led a session at EDGE 2026 on Tuesday that focused on network design.

Kulkarni believes that it is important to define the purpose of your supply chain and how it fits into your business’s strategic objectives. “Is it something you can articulate?” he asks.

A network should be built with speed, the ability to take risks, and innovation, he said. “You need to know what explicit business objectives will define success and what capabilities are needed to meet those objectives.”

Kulkarni dug into his experience, sharing case histories from two of the companies he worked for in the past. The first was the design of the Microsoft Surface tablet computer. The tablet was designed with more than 500 customer-defined hardware configurations, which added extra complexity to production and distribution.

This story was originally published by Supply Chain Quarterly. Read the full story at Supply Chain Quarterly →