A supply chain expert recently shared that his biggest risk isn’t tariffs or shipping lanes. His best planner, a guy with 37 years of experience, is retiring in six months. And that knowledge is irreplaceable.

 

He’s not alone. The ‘retirement cliff’ is the most underrated threat to global supply chains today. We’re about to lose a generation of institutional knowledge—the kind of gut-feel expertise that was never written down.

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (tracking US Employment data) projects 26,400 new logistics jobs will open up annually for the next decade, largely due to retirements. That’s a massive brain drain. Just in US.

 

For years, the answer was just hire new experts, but for this experience gap, there are simply not that many experts out there.

 

The solution is AI, which still has to reach that point, though. Not any AI, but agentic AI; intelligent agents that can learn from senior planners, creating a digital clone of their decision-making process. According to Dataiku, this is the #1 trend for 2026. Vertical Deep agents are required but there are not many as of yet.

 

What you want is:

And it isn’t science fiction anymore. It’s happening now, however the race for deep vertical agents is just getting started. BCG projects that Agentic AI will account for nearly 30% of total AI value by 2028.

 

At Mind IT, we’re building these augmented connected workforces for our clients. Domain expertise is still most sought after, and till AI starts getting it absolutely right, this knowledge needs to be preserved, and probably even beyond that. These domain experts are the crucial factor in making AI work for you and not the other way around.

 

Currently, if you have boomers who are supply chain experts, you have an advantage over others. It has not yet become possible to replicate the gut feel, the relationship intelligence, the crisis judgment that comes from decades in the industry.

 

What do you think? Can AI solve this retirement cliff, and by when.

Shailendra Gupta
(Co-Founder and CEO of Mind IT Systems)

 

Shailendra is Co-Founder and CEO of Mind IT Systems and is responsible for strategy and business relations.

With around two decades of experience in getting things done in marketing, sales, strategy, delivery, or technology, he has a successful track record of leading startups and mid-size companies and being a prime contributor to stakeholder management, growth, and value creation. A thought leader in the geo-social space, he is highly respected for realizing new paradigms in marketing, solutions, and approaches.