{"id":35469,"date":"2026-06-09T21:28:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T01:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/?p=35469"},"modified":"2026-06-09T21:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T01:28:09","slug":"rob-handfield-writes-about-lenovos-ai-supply-chain-for-harvard-business-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/article\/rob-handfield-writes-about-lenovos-ai-supply-chain-for-harvard-business-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Handfield Writes About Lenovo&#8217;s AI Supply Chain for Harvard Business Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/people\/rbhandfi\/\">Rob Handfield<\/a>, the Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management, published a piece in the <em>Harvard Business Review<\/em> titled \u201cHow Lenovo Built an AI-Powered Supply Chain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMost companies deploying AI in their supply chains are making a common mistake,\u201d he begins \u201cThey are starting with the technology before understanding their data. They launch pilots, experiment with forecasting tools, and deploy isolated optimization engines \u2014 then wonder why almost none of it scales. The problem isn\u2019t the AI. It\u2019s that they skipped the step that makes AI trustworthy. Build intelligence on a broken data foundation and you get broken intelligence, every single time.\u201d<br><br>He then cites Lenovo as a company that handled AI integration into their supply chain correctly. They spent years developing their own AI architecture, which had led to clear and measurable gains in accuracy and efficiency. Handfield conducted interviews with Jack Fiedler, who was in charge of Lenovo\u2019s digital transformation team, and compared his approach with those of similar companies. He came away with several lessons that other companies can learn from Lenovo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2026\/05\/how-lenovo-built-an-ai-powered-supply-chain\">Read the article and learn the lessons at hbr.org.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"<!-- wp:ncst\/dynamic-header {\"block\":\"ncst\/default-post-header\"} -->\n<!-- wp:ncst\/default-post-header {\"displayCategoryID\":639,\"subtitle\":\"The Poole College supply chain expert explains how Lenovo integrated AI into their supply chain more successfully than competitors.\"} \/-->\n<!-- \/wp:ncst\/dynamic-header -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/people\/rbhandfi\/\">Rob Handfield<\/a>, the Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management, published a piece in the <em>Harvard Business Review<\/em> titled \u201cHow Lenovo Built an AI-Powered Supply Chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>\u201cMost companies deploying AI in their supply chains are making a common mistake,\u201d he begins \u201cThey are starting with the technology before understanding their data. They launch pilots, experiment with forecasting tools, and deploy isolated optimization engines \u2014 then wonder why almost none of it scales. The problem isn\u2019t the AI. It\u2019s that they skipped the step that makes AI trustworthy. Build intelligence on a broken data foundation and you get broken intelligence, every single time.\u201d<br><br>He then cites Lenovo as a company that handled AI integration into their supply chain correctly. They spent years developing their own AI architecture, which had led to clear and measurable gains in accuracy and efficiency. Handfield conducted interviews with Jack Fiedler, who was in charge of Lenovo\u2019s digital transformation team, and compared his approach with those of similar companies. He came away with several lessons that other companies can learn from Lenovo.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2026\/05\/how-lenovo-built-an-ai-powered-supply-chain\">Read the article and learn the lessons at hbr.org.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Poole College supply chain expert explains how Lenovo integrated AI into their supply chain more successfully than competitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39405,"featured_media":33697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"displayCategoryID\":639,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"The Poole College supply chain expert explains how Lenovo integrated AI into their supply chain more successfully than competitors.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[639,170,77,81],"tags":[674,430,188],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-35469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-in-the-news","category-newswire","category-supply-chain-management","tag-ai","tag-rob-handfield","tag-supply-chain"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":639,"name":"AI","slug":"ai","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":639,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":20,"filter":"raw"},"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35469"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35564,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35469\/revisions\/35564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35469"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=35469"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/thought-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=35469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}