From visibility to velocity: Why supply chain control towers must become orchestration engines

By Prashant Gupta, Partner, and Kartik Pal,Manager, Kearney India

Over the last decade, supply chain control towers have become a familiar fixture across Indian enterprises. Retailers, automotive manufacturers, and FMCG companies invested heavily in dashboards promising end-to-end visibility across inventory, logistics, and fulfillment. Yet, despite this surge in transparency, many supply chains remain trapped in reactive firefighting. The issue is not a lack of data. It is a limited enablement of faster decision making.

As India’s economy scales toward a USD 5 trillion milestone, supply chains are under pressure to operate faster, leaner, and more resilient than ever. Demand volatility, fragmented supplier ecosystems, omnichannel complexity, and rising service expectations have rendered traditional planning-led models insufficient. What organizations now require is not better visibility, but AI-powered orchestration embedded within control towers.

When Visibility Is Not Enough
Supply chain control towers, in their current form, are largely ...