Saskia van Gendt, CSO at Blue Yonder, discusses the impact of AI on supply chain management and the evolution of her role in a balance-sheet-led world
The tendrils of artificial intelligence are creeping into every area of the economy.
While the negatives are well documented, AI can also deliver significant benefits and help sectors build a more efficient future.
Speaking during Climate Week NYC 2026, Saskia van Gendt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder, discusses how AI is changing supply chain management.
Key facts
- 6% - Efficiency gains that can come using AI to support material flows between warehouses.
6% - Efficiency gains that can come using AI to support material flows between warehouses.
She explains how AI helps evaluate the full lifecycle of data centre infrastructure, improve logistics, and support circular manufacturing.
Saskia also shares her thoughts on how the CSO role is changing and how corporate sustainability is moving from broad marketing goals to practical strategies that link cost savings with real environmental results.
AI is a major talking point this week in New York, and people are discussing the environmental impact of data centres beyond basic power consumption. How important is it that leaders evaluate the full lifecycle of a data centre and AI infrastructure?
We always take more of a systems view, not just looking at singular issues.
Of course, there's a lot of focus on the current build-out and how much energy and water it uses. But Blue Yonder is also actively supporting the build-out from a supply chain management perspective and thinking about how all of the cement and concrete and steel and servers are going to get to those facilities.
Just like you can optimise the supply chains of a grocery store around your warehouse locations and your routing, the same can be applied for these huge build-outs that require so many different materials.
We are actively supporting that and looking for efficiency within the data centre construction itself.
There are a lot of community and societal impacts to consider. And one of the things that I'm hearing is that communities have a lot of leverage around what those build-outs look like.
They can be asking for benefits that come back to their community, and that's becoming a little bit more front-and-centre in the build-out itself.
Another key narrative is really around the materials in the data centre. Servers and thinking about circular manufacturing for some of that equipment.
We know there's a two- to seven-year lifespan for a lot of the equipment. How do we think about taking those materials back, the reverse logistics and reprocessing them, recycling them?
How is the logistics sector adapting to the growing demand for circularity, take-back programmes and extended producer responsibility?
It's relatively new for data centres themselves, but I have seen over my career a lot of standardisation around energy efficiency in electronics and the ability to take back and recycle and more modularity built into the design.
We now know that there are so many rare and valuable minerals and metals in this equipment, so there is a high incentive to take them back. We're seeing more take-back programmes and more incentives at the consumer level.
But then also I think the infrastructure will continue to grow around data centres to make sure that we have the capacity to actually recycle them.
It's all good if you do the reverse logistics, but you need to be able to take those data centres, disassemble them and take those materials back to put them back into use.
I think we still have a lot of room to grow in developing a lot of that infrastructure and capacity, just like we have across the recycling network.
How is AI impacting what you're doing in terms of keeping track of materials, making sure materials aren't being wasted or using trucks in a more efficient way?
We've been using various forms of AI for a long time, and it's built into the optimisation across our different solutions.
If you're thinking about planning your inventory, whether it's raw materials or products that you're going to manufacture or products to send to store, there's so much more intelligence that can come in.
All of that intelligence can now create a much more accurate inventory plan.
AI can factor all of that in and make the entire flow more accurate in inventory and more efficient when it gets transported to the store. Then there's a lot of AI optimisation around just overall transportation.
We see that because of different disruptions, whether it's the closure in the Strait of Hormuz or aclimate-impacted weather event requiring rerouting.
We have been using various forms of AI to do that intelligently with the lowest footprint.
It depends on the scale and the maturity of the customer, how much optimisation they've already brought in, but there's at least a 6% efficiency that can come not just from routing specifically, but from thinking about connectivity between the warehouse and transportation so that those material flows or those intelligence flows are as efficient as possible.
How can you build a more resilient supply chain and logistics setup to navigate those disruptions?
A lot of it is scenario planning, and you can run what-if scenarios based on different manufacturing locations and disruptions. Then you can have several plans in place that you're considering at any moment.
What we've been able to do through our planning solutions is build in the ability not just to look at speed and cost in those different scenarios but actually factor in the carbon emissions.
You can see in real time that Scenario A is the most expensive, fastest and lowest carbon footprint, for example. And then you have that intelligence as you're deciding what decision to make for each scenario.
But that scenario planning is really effective because you can't predict the future, but at least you have different plans in place in case you need to execute.
How has the CSO role changed over the past five years and how do you think it's going to change over the next five to 10 years?
We have seen, not just for sustainability leaders, but in general, a shift in sustainability from more of a marketing effort to a much more results-driven, proven strategy to meet goals.
When I was first coming up in corporate sustainability, companies were competing over who was going to have the lowest net zero by 2020 or 2030 and who was going to be 100% plastic-free by a certain date.
It was exciting because it was ambitious, but it didn't always come with real plans, strategy, funding or operational buy-in to meet those goals.
Corporate sustainability is moving from broad marketing goals to practical strategies that link cost savings with real environmental resultsSaskia van Gendt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder
Corporate sustainability is moving from broad marketing goals to practical strategies that link cost savings with real environmental results
Saskia van Gendt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder
Now we're seeing much more focus on not just ambitious goals that get people's attention, but real goals with real strategy underneath them that come with underlying financial and funding plans.
And that's where the current CSO is really focused on operationalising sustainability, making sure that departments not only understand the company-wide objectives and mandates, but have the ability to execute against them, whether it be their own funding strategies, their own metrics that they're tracking, their own systems that are allowing them to see how they can make and support those goals.
So it is a bit of a shift from thinking really kind of visionary and really much more kind of operationalising and more of that operator role.
How do you coach executives to treat sustainability, resilience and cost reduction as a strategy rather than a cost base?
From a supply chain perspective, there's so much synergy between creating more resilient supply chains and improving their sustainability.
A couple of examples: if you have alternative suppliers or early visibility into where impacts can occur, you can get ahead of potential disruptions. That early activity still gives you enough time to make the lowest-footprint decision.
If you think about a disruption in the fashion industry because of a climate event, or some other kind of road disruption, and a material doesn't get to that facility, suddenly your entire production is delayed.
What we've been able to do through our planning solutions is build in the ability not just to look at speed and cost in those different scenarios but actually factor in the carbon emissionsSaskia van Gendt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder
What we've been able to do through our planning solutions is build in the ability not just to look at speed and cost in those different scenarios but actually factor in the carbon emissions
Saskia van Gendt, Chief Sustainability Officer at Blue Yonder
Usually you would find that out in days, but with AI, you can plan proactively. And then you're not sending something by airplane. You can plan for a lower-carbon-footprint scenario.
I think that foresight, better planning and end-to-end visibility can enable a more sustainable outcome.
What we're seeing from our customers is a lot of times the decisions are helping them reduce overproduction, which helps them reduce costs and waste associated with that, and then take miles out of their logistics network, which is reducing fuel costs and reducing emissions.
It's a nice, mutual benefit between more speed, resilience, lower cost, lower carbon, lower waste.
Are you becoming more financially literate as a result of these changes?
Yeah, we are, and we have been. Because within the supply chain, a lot of companies will come to us looking for the cost benefit of improving their supply chain. And we have to speak in that currency.
We have financial ROIs for the different solutions we recommend, and we know how investments need to scale to achieve the results we're getting.
Sustainability teams have been asked to do things like ROIs for a long time, but now it's becoming that much more critical.
When we're working with our clients, we're making sure that we're helping them speak to their CFOs and make that financial case.
