We’re heading into conference season, so you’ll see us out and about – keep an eye out for Stef and Marc.
Looking at the agendas, there’s plenty on sustainability, automation, AI, agility, macroeconomics, and lots of other good stuff… but very little on the labour challenge.
Automation is a priority for many, but for a lot of businesses it’s still a few years away. In the meantime, labour is often the biggest cost, the biggest constraint, and the biggest source of day-to-day volatility; yet it’s often still being planned with spreadsheets, manual edits, and heroic firefighting.
It reminds me of Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s line at Davos in 2019: “It feels like I’m at a firefighters’ conference and no one is allowed to speak about water.”
It feels like we often talk about the future of supply chains without talking enough about how to make the most of the workforce delivering in the here and now.
Phil, CEO
What does a 640,000 sq ft warehouse look like when robots do the walking, lifting and labelling? As AI and robotics accelerate, this tour brings to mind the tension between efficiency, workforce impact, and Amazon’s ambition to automate up to 75% of operations. (6 mins)
“As warehouses increasingly adopt automation, AI-driven systems, and robotics, the gap between available skills and employer needs continues to widen.” The UK Warehousing Association‘s Skills Policy argues that without urgent reform, the skills system won’t keep pace with modern warehousing. (4 mins)
If you’re thinking about agentic AI and autonomous planning, this article is a timely reminder: AI can amplify planning, but it can’t replace the fundamentals. The real differentiator isn’t access to technology, but how well organisations embed it into decision-making, processes, and governance. (8 mins)
AI is supposed to save us time. But what if it actually makes us busier? The real question isn’t whether AI will change work, but whether organisations will actively shape that change, or let it quietly shape them. (5 mins)
AI may not erase underlying skill differences, but it could reshape how performance gaps show up in practice. While AI boosts productivity for everyone, the gains are significantly larger for lower-education participants, closing roughly three quarters of the original gap. (10 mins)
MIT researchers have trained a large language model to optimise DNA sequences for protein drug production and it’s outperforming existing tools. A fascinating example of AI cutting costs and speeding up complex scientific development. (4 mins)
The Winter Olympics quietly became an AI-powered operation; from 15-second 360° replays to an “Olympic GPT” and AI-managed snowmaking. Milano Cortina 2026 showcased AI not as a gimmick, but as core infrastructure, a glimpse of how intelligent systems are reshaping one of the world’s most complex live events. (6 mins)
Existing workforce management tools are designed to execute a plan, not to determine whether the plan itself is viable, cost-effective, or compliant.
We provide the governing decision layer above execution. We’re the platform that organisations use to commit to a labour plan before it is handed to downstream systems.
If you fancy a 15-min chat to compare notes, swap stories, or see what’s now possible with labour decision intelligence, drop us a line.
Until next month, Team Predyktable