Ask supply chain leaders about their biggest challenges and one recurring theme pops up: too much information, not enough clarity. With roughly 10 million supply chain signals generated daily, the real challenge is in knowing which disruptions require immediate action, and which can wait. That ability to filter signal from noise has become a competitive differentiator.
This topic was at the heart of our recent conversation with Lisa Boucher, Director of Supply Chain Sustainability & Risk Management at Calix, a cloud and software platform company that helps broadband service providers deliver more reliable, scalable networks. Together with Resilinc’s Gopkiran Rao, Shahzaib Khan, and Bryce Nelson, the discussion revealed how forward-thinking organizations are fundamentally reimagining what it means to manage risk at scale.
The new normal of nonstop disruption
Consider the numbers: In the first half of this year alone, Resilinc’s EventWatchAI validated nearly 9,000 discrete global disruptions. Port closures. Climate events. UFLPA enforcement actions. Factory fires. Each carries the potential to ripple through multiple supplier tiers, creating exposure that’s difficult to quantify and even harder to contain.
And the reality? For most organizations, the disruption had happened well before they knew to look for it. Gop highlighted this as a key theme:
“When your most critical components or materials are buried two or three tiers deep, even small events trigger major consequences.“
The question isn’t whether disruptions will occur; it’s whether your organization can identify which ones matter before they explode into business-critical problems.
How Calix reimagined supply chain disruption response
Lisa Boucher’s description of Calix’s transformation offers a view into what changes when organizations move from reactive triage to proactive action.
Before implementing Resilinc, Calix faced what many manufacturers still experience: a time-consuming, manual effort of disruption triage. When a major event occurred, the team would contact tier-one suppliers, who would contact tier-twos, who would contact tier-threes—a process Lisa describes as “extremely labor-intensive just to get an answer.”
The cost wasn’t just time. It was certainty. Without clear visibility, communicating risk exposure to executives became nearly impossible.
Today, Calix operates differently. Suppliers are expected to respond within 24 hours. Automated workflows replace manual outreach, and the team focuses on mitigation strategy rather than information gathering.
But Lisa’s most striking observation wasn’t about efficiency, it was about capability:
“Dashboards show you what happened. Agents help you decide what to do next. That’s the difference between reporting and resolution.”
Why multi-tier visibility became non-negotiable
Among the pandemic’s many lasting impacts on supply chain management was the need for multi-tier visibility. The pandemic exposed how little most organizations knew about their deeper supplier networks and proved that risks don’t respect tier boundaries, lessons that continue to drive strategy today. Shahzaib noted:
“Before COVID, companies focused only on tier-one. Today our customers need to go five, six, even seven tiers deep to ensure supply chain resilience. Without technology like agents, there’s simply no way to process that scale.”
And the scale is staggering. If you have 100 tier-one suppliers, each with 50 tier-two suppliers, you’re already managing exposure across 5,000 relationships. Add tier-three, and the complexity becomes exponential. No amount of manual effort can continuously monitor that landscape in real time.
This is where agents shift from “nice to have” to “necessary.” They work 24/7, continuously evaluating signals, identifying risks, and recommending action, long before human teams even start their day.
How collaboration builds intelligent AI
Many AI initiatives are built in isolation, then delivered to users with the expectation of immediate adoption and value.
Resilinc’s approach inverts this model. The Disruption Agent was co-developed with the practitioners who would use it daily. The approach to building it replicates a uniquely effective methodology developed by Resilinc to productize high value AI agents for supply chain risk. Shahzaib explained:
“We sit down with our customers and ask: ‘If an agent sat at your desk each morning, what questions would you ask it?‘ That’s how we create agents that solve real problems.“
Lisa reinforced why this matters.
“Data is powerful—but only if it’s actionable. Partnering closely ensures you’re building what customers actually need.“
AI systems built in isolation rarely align with how work gets done. When agents don’t fit existing workflows, they create more problems than they solve; but when they understand context, they create value.
What autonomous disruption response actually looks like
During the demonstration of the Disruption Agent, three capabilities stood out:
- Intelligent summarization. The agent answers the question every supply chain professional asks: “What do I need to know about?” It delivers an instant summary of the most critical events, filtering noise and highlighting disruptions with confirmed business impact.
- Risk prioritization at scale. Using revenue-at-risk, lead-time impact, single-source exposure, and supplier responsiveness, the agent ranks which events require immediate action.
- Ready-to-execute recommendations. From supplier outreach to WarRoom activation, the agent proposes mitigation steps based on 16 years of Resilinc customer behavior. These context-aware actions aren’t guesswork; they’re informed by what’s worked for companies facing similar situations.
Critically, the agent recommends and prepares, but humans approve. This human-in-the-loop design delivers both speed and control, two critical components for a healthy supply chain.
The power of simulation over reaction
When asked what capability mattered most, Lisa immediately responded with “simulation.”
“We’re constantly asking, ‘What if?’ and identifying alternatives before disruptions occur. The knowledge is powerful. Sometimes you act, sometimes you don’t. You just don’t want to be surprised.”
This mindset shift from responsive to proactive may be the most valuable outcome of agentic AI. The goal is to build organizational muscle memory for scenarios that haven’t happened yet.
What this means for supply chain leadership
The conversation revealed a fundamental shift: we’re moving from an era where supply chain risk management meant assembling the right dashboards to one that means deploying the right agents. When disruptions arrive at today’s pace and scale, organizations need systems that prioritize which events matter, recommend responses, and prepare actions – all in collaboration with humans.
That’s the value of agentic AI, and what makes the Disruption Agent essential to supply chain practitioners. It operates continuously, evaluating signals, surfacing critical risks, and turning overwhelming amounts of data into clear next steps.
Want to hear the whole conversation? View the on-demand webinar.
