From tracking to triggering: Supply chain visibility is becoming an execution engine

Supply chain visibility has long been discussed as a technology problem—how to track inventory, shipments, and conditions across increasingly complex networks. But in practice, visibility is becoming something far more operational. It is morphing into a way to trigger the right action, at the right time, by the right person.

Guy Yehiav, president of SmartSense by Digi, joined Supply Chain Management Review at the recent NRF Retail Big Show in New York City to discuss how visibility and tracking have moved from just knowing where product or assets are located into actionable insights that are driving efficiencies throughout the supply chain.

Visibility across regulated supply chains

Yehiav focused on regulated supply chains—food, pharmaceuticals, and other temperature-sensitive goods—where visibility failures don’t just create inefficiency, but risk waste, compliance violations, and product loss.

SmartSense’s solutions monitor temperature-sensitive shipments.

Yehiav described visibility not as a single checkpoint, but as a continuous thread. In food production, for example, monitoring begins before freezing, with checks on temperature, humidity, and even pH levels. From there, products move into transportation, where route validation and condition monitoring become critical.

“When you ship it, you want to make sure that through the route it’s a validated route on the 3PL,” he said.

The same logic applies downstream, he noted. Real-time location and condition data allow warehouses and stores to prepare for arrivals before trucks reach the dock.

“If it arrives 20 minutes before it is scheduled to arrive at the store, you want to make sure that people at the store get a task [notification] saying, ‘Hey, the truck is arriving early … as soon as it arrives, just put it in the walk-in,’” Yehiav explained.

In that scenario, visibility prevents spoilage not by reporting a violation after the fact, but by orchestrating a timely response prior to the violation happening.

From sensing to prescriptive action

A recurring theme in the conversation was that visibility only becomes valuable when it drives execution. Sensors alone are not enough; the system has to translate signals into instructions, and that is where visibility really shines.

Yehiav described how condition and location data feeds prescriptive analytics that identify exceptions such as off-route shipments, temperature excursions, and early or late arrivals, and then recommends corrective action.

Inside warehouses, the same principle applies. Temperature monitoring in walk-ins and ambient storage areas helps operators avoid placing regulated products in zones that are already out of tolerance.

“It tells you slot number 145 is in an excursion right now,” Yehiav said, “and then it tells you … don’t put [regulated products] in zone eight because it is in violation.”

This shift from awareness to instruction reflects a broader trend taking place in supply chain as silos break down and more cohesive and integrated solutions are deployed. In this case, that evolution is driven directly by frontline execution needs, not abstract planning models.

Connecting visibility to logistics risk

Cargo theft has also been in the news later, and Yehiav says the use of crime-risk indexes is also helping improve planning. Yehiav explained that high-risk zones are loaded into the SmartSense system using crime-risk indexes. If a truck stops in an unauthorized or high-risk area, alerts are triggered.

“There’s different high-risk zones … so if the truck stops there, we have prescriptive analytics that say, ‘Hey, don’t stop there. You need to continue,’” he said.

Route deviation detection and stop validation add another layer of protection, particularly in the first 100–150 miles after departure, a known risk window for theft.

Visibility inside the warehouse walls

While transportation visibility often gets the most attention, Yehiav emphasized that some of the most damaging visibility gaps occur inside warehouses.

“In a warehouse in Texas, up on the high-end shelves, it could be pretty hot,” he said. “It’s violating the manufacturing recommendation.”

Without continuous monitoring, he said, those conditions may go unnoticed until products are already compromised. By embedding sensors in walk-ins, doors, and storage zones, operators can identify issues in real time and redirect inventory before violations cascade.

Customer expectations and the pressure for automation

Of course, visibility and tracking, like other areas of supply chain, are seeing artificial intelligence add new layers of insight and decision-making. Yehiav explained how consumer expectations driven by AI are spilling into supply chain operations, something he referred to as the “liquidation of demand.”

“Those people are native AI, not native digital anymore,” he said. “They expect things to happen automatically more than even before.”

That expectation creates pressure for supply chains to move faster, with fewer manual handoffs and less tolerance for delays or surprises. At the same time, Yehiav acknowledged growing skepticism around AI after early implementations failed to meet inflated expectations. “There’s a lot of doubt now coming in,” he said, referring to AI deployments that promised more than they delivered.

He said that companies need to understand and deploy AI in a reasonable way, comparing it to the early days of robotics installations.

“If you design a robot to do one thing, and specialize in that, it’s amazing,” Yehiav said. “But if you ask it to do other stuff, it will fail.”

In the end, Yehaiv sees sensors, connectivity, and analytics as important tools to enable faster and better decisions across the physical flow of goods. Visibility is one component of that overall orchestration, and increasingly, it is helping prevent problems from happening, rather than documenting problems that have occurred.

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