The Zero100 Podcast

When Carlos Ruiz joined Church & Dwight as Chief Supply Chain Officer, he realized the company's biggest asset – rigid, built-to-last manufacturing lines – was actually holding it back. His solution: stop building equipment for 15-year depreciation schedules and start building for speed and flexibility. But the real challenge isn't the technology or capital approval – it’s convincing people to let go of what worked yesterday. This week on the podcast, Carlos tells Zero100's Jenna Fink (Senior Director, Research & Advisory) how he’s tackling change management, navigating board expectations, and leading Church & Dwight's evolution from Lean foundations to end-to-end operational excellence.

Backflips and kung fu routines make great viral videos, but what's the actual business case for humanoid robots? Zero100’s Lauren Acoba (VP, Head of Research & Advisory), Kevin O'Marah (Chief Research Officer), and Jenna Fink (Senior Director, Research & Advisory) cut through the hype to explain why we predict a 1000% jump in real humanoid workflows this year. Turns out, the biggest advantage isn’t the robot itself – it’s that humanoids can drop into existing workflows without expensive facility redesigns, cutting integration costs by 80%. The team explores lessons from BMW’s approach in Spartanburg, why China's robotics lead matters, what makes a use case worth pursuing, and how to tell when a demo is operationally credible or just impressive theater.

Zero100’s Forum brought CSCOs and COOs to the Arizona desert to tackle the question keeping operations leaders up at night: how do you scale AI when insights outpace execution? Caroline Chumakov and Justin Gillebo (Senior Directors, Research & Advisory) sit down with Sophia Pouzyrev (Account Executive) to unpack the candid conversations that defined the event – from the Rt Hon Sir Tony Blair’s insights on the unwinding of 30 years of globalization to Scott Galloway's challenge on designing work for Gen Z. The verdict: leaders have moved past pilots. 2026 is about production, orchestration, and building talent that can keep pace with technology. If you're stuck between insight and action, this debrief captures what's actually working.

As war in the Middle East disrupts one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints, container shipping networks face unprecedented operational challenges. Rabab Boulos, Chief Operating Officer at A.P. Moller - Maersk, joins Kevin O’Marah, Chief Research Officer at Zero100, to discuss how the company is managing through extraordinary disruption in the Gulf – from suspending bookings and rerouting vessels to redesigning fuel supply chains in real time. Rabab shares Maersk’s crisis management framework, how technology enables visibility when conditions change by the hour, and what it will take to restore normal service.

Two years ago, building an app required an engineering team and weeks of back-and-forth. Now, it can be done in two and a half hours using plain English. In this episode, VP, Research & Advisory Kelly Coutinho, Data Analyst Andreas Arghyrou, and Head of Digital Member Experience Ryan Mahoney dive into the wonderful world of vibe coding. None of them are developers, yet all three are using tools like Replit and Lovable to create prototypes, dashboards, and monitoring systems without writing a line of code. From prompt patterns and early demos to the guardrails needed to move from MVP to production, this conversation offers a practical lens on what leaders should do now as the tech–ops gap narrows fast.The Zero100 team’s first “Wait – I just built that?” moments (01:29)Ops, meet your new superpower: building MVPs without engineers (03:03)First vibe coding faceplants and why iteration beats “failure” (04:52)Prompting that works: context, clarity, and a little finesse (07:07)Getting buy-in fast – bring a demo, not a deck (09:35)When prototypes need to graduate to production (11:18)Separating experimentation from enterprise rigor (13:22)The supply chain future where everyone codes (but the real skill is knowing what to build) (15:20)

Companies are running tons of AI pilots, yet most struggle to move from experimentation to scaled impact. Zero100’s latest research reveals why: only 15% of organizations say their data foundation is ready to support AI at scale, while the rest wrestle with fragmentated data and meetings where teams spend more time debating which numbers to trust than making decisions. This week, Kelly Coutinho (VP, Research & Advisory), Julia “JD” Dahlgren ( Director, Data Science), and Justin Gillebo (Senior Director, Research & Advisory) explore what “decision safe data” actually means, why agentic systems raise the bar on clarity, and working from one source of truth. The data cleanliness issue that gave 500,000 free gas and electricity (01:11)Why 85% of companies aren’t ready for “decision-safe” AI (02:18)How humans and AI fail differently (07:40)How "good enough" data can lead to misaligned metrics and escalating operational costs (10:04)The human in the loop – from training a replacement to becoming a collaborator (13:57)The “decision agreement” test: How to know when your AI is ready for production (15:49)The ultimate prize? Compressing the time between signal and response (17:37)

Circularity is climbing the agenda in fashion, but what actually drives results? Former Puma Chief Sourcing Officer Anne-Laure Descours has spent 30 years working across Asia’s supply chains, seeing firsthand which sustainability efforts stick… and which stall. In this episode, she joins Senior Director, Research & Advisory Jenna Fink to explore how manufacturers are embedding sustainability into real business performance. From the limits of textile recycling to the coalitions and production decisions shaping material innovation, Anne-Laure explains why the competitive edge sits upstream, and why suppliers often see the commercial logic more clearly than brands.When “doing it right” became a competitive edge (01:10) China’s “Two Mountains” philosophy: green growth = real growth (02:43) Metrics matter… but the real work happens in factories (05:42) The unsung heroes: machinery and suppliers driving the backstage innovation (07:33) RE:FIBRE, circularity hype, and why we can’t recycle 150B garments a year (08:17) The waste-to-energy pivot (because sorting doesn’t scale) (11:38) Making the business case for sustainability: wins, fails, and supplier-led change (14:03) Boardroom perspectives, DNA traceability, and giving makers their due (18:06)

Toyota practically wrote the book on continuous improvement. But can the plays that won championships before still win them today? This week, Kevin Austin, Group Vice President, Supply Chain at Toyota North America, tackles one of the hardest leadership challenges: transforming a company built on discipline and proven systems without losing what made it great. In conversation with Zero100 Chief Research Officer Kevin O'Marah (yes, two Kevins), he reveals why TPS is the foundation that makes transformation possible, and what happens when AI meets craftspeople who've spent 30 years building cars.The tension between pride, legacy, and a world that got way more complex (01:20)How to know when digital transformation isn’t working (and you’re the bottleneck) (03:37)Early missteps and why noble missions beat shiny tools (05:37)Fixing friction from forecasting all the way to customer delivery (08:20)When customers can track a $10 pizza but not a $50,000 vehicle (12:37)How TPS creates a stable backbone for experimentation (15:17)When AI meets craftsmanship: Amplifying 30 years of judgment with technology (17:07)What stays Toyota, what must change, and Kevin's north star (22:24)

For every bold AI vision from a CEO, there's a COO thinking: “That's not happening on your timeline.” Zero100’s new survey reveals the scale of the disconnect: 83% of COOs see a significant gap between what’s being promised and what’s operationally feasible. But COOs aren't skeptics – they’re realists who know what execution actually takes. Chief Research Officer Kevin O’Marah and VP, Research & Advisory Services Lauren Acoba reveal how top COOs are bridging the gap: targeting specific workflows, building on existing tech stacks, and playing the long game while delivering near-term wins. Inside the data: What 100 COOs told us about AI (01:45)Closing the loop and creating value beyond the sale (05:32)Why COOs want to move from execution to strategy (and why CEOs should be relieved) (09:16)Stop! Don’t rip out your tech stack: Why layering AI is the smarter play (14:31)The Goldilocks approach to placing successful AI bets (17:50)The COO decade and why ops leaders are built for what’s next (21:11)

The Zero100 mailbag is open – and the questions inside reveal what's really keeping supply chain leaders up at night. With a little help from our own agentic AI sorting system, Chief Content Officer Matt Davis, Principal, Research Jenna Fink, and VP, Research Geraint John tackle what they've been hearing from the community. How do you move logistics from dashboards to execution? How do you orchestrate multiple AI agents on the same process? And how do you transform operations when the same people driving change are also keeping everything from falling apart?How to sell a data cleanup project (and the CPG that cut 192 hours of downtime) (02:12) Why procurement is having its AI moment (05:37) The transformation paradox: how do you change while keeping the wheels turning? (08:20) Orchestration: Zero100's word of the year (12:05)The visibility-to-execution gap (and why logistics is lagging) (16:26) Getting agents to actually work together (20:37)