Operational Excellence (OPEX) Insight – Tuesday - June 23, 2026: Volatility Is the New Normal - and Resilience Is No Longer Plan B.
Góc Nhìn Vận Hành Xuất Sắc – Thứ Ba, Ngày 23/06/2026: Biến Động Là Bình Thường Mới Và Khả Năng Phục Hồi Không Còn Là Phương Án Dự Phòng.
Welcome To Operational Excellence (OPEX) Insight Article For The Paid Subscriber-Only Edition.
This is the bilingual post in English and Vietnamese. Vietnamese is below.
Đây là bài viết song ngữ Anh-Việt. Tiếng Việt ở bên dưới.
English
PART 1 – OFFICIAL INFORMATION
The State of Logistics 2026 Report, one of the most respected annual reports in global logistics, has just been released with a striking central message: volatility has become the “new normal” shaping global supply chains, requiring businesses to adapt continuously. The report was released by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) at a press briefing at the Empire State Building, authored by consultancy Kearney and presented by Penske Logistics. This year’s report is titled “Forged in Disruption.”
The report’s core figure is U.S. Business Logistics Costs (USBLC). In 2026, this stood at $2.4 trillion, equal to 7.8% of U.S. GDP. Compared with 2025, when costs were $2.6 trillion and 8.7% of GDP, this is a notable decline. Yet what stands out is that the report does not treat this cost decline as a sign of returning stability; on the contrary, it stresses that the operating environment is more deeply volatile than ever.
Korhan Acar, partner in Kearney’s Strategic Operations practice and lead author of the report, spelled out the nature of the change: “Tariff complexity, geopolitical uncertainty, changing trade flows, AI adoption, and new network designs are becoming permanent features of the logistics landscape.“ In other words, factors once seen as temporary shocks have now become a fixed operating condition every business must live with.
An important argument the report makes is the change in the nature of risk. It argues that external geopolitical shocks and trade policy changes now have a bigger impact on the logistics market than traditional concerns such as demand or capacity. For decades, supply chain managers worried mainly about demand rising or falling, about whether there were enough ships, trucks, warehouses. Now, the variables beyond the firm’s direct control, such as war, tariffs, and political instability, are the strongest shapers of the market. This is a fundamental shift in how operational risk is understood.
Hence the report’s call to action is clear and rather blunt: U.S. companies have stopped waiting for the supply chain to “return to normal.” In recent years, many organizations operated on an implicit assumption that the turbulence was temporary and everything would return to the old stable state. The report states plainly that that assumption is wrong, and only the most successful companies are truly adapting, where continuous adjustment is now a requirement for supply chain resilience.
The official message lies not in the cost figure itself, but in a watershed admission for the whole industry: the old normal will not return, volatility is a permanent condition, and resilience together with continuous adaptation has shifted from a backup option to a core capability. This is an event worth analyzing deeply, because it poses a fundamental operational question: if volatility is permanent, by what principle must one operate not just to survive but to prevail?
