When machines take over, networks win !

Amazon made an announcement last week that sent ripples through the logistics industry. The company launched Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), opening its logistics network to any business in the world. Ocean freight, air cargo, warehousing, last-mile delivery. All of it. To everyone.

The first reaction many forwarders will have is concern. The right reaction is curiosity.

Because what Amazon has actually done is prove something the logistics industry has always known but rarely acted on: data and domain expertise, combined, are the most valuable assets in this business. Amazon built its advantage quietly, over thirty years. The question for every network and forwarder reading this is not whether to be worried, it is whether to be inspired.

What Amazon actually proved

Peter Larsen, VP of Amazon Supply Chain Services, was direct about the source of their advantage: capacity, operational rigour, and data. "Supply chain wasn't just a function at Amazon. It was core to providing an exceptional shopping experience. Our differentiator."

Amazon did not win on price. It did not win on relationships. It won by systematising knowledge at scale: turning every delivery, every warehouse movement, every carrier booking into a data point that made the next decision smarter.

That is a model any logistics network can learn from. Not to replicate Amazon, but to understand what is genuinely valuable and build on it.

What Amazon cannot replicate

Here is what Amazon's announcement does not change: the complexity of moving a wind turbine blade from a factory in Denmark to a construction site in Brazil. The OOG routing knowledge built over years of experience. The relationship with the port agent in Santos. The lashing engineer who has seen this cargo before. The forwarder who knows which customs broker to call at midnight.

Amazon is built for scale and standardisation. Breakbulk and project logistics is built for complexity and trust. These are fundamentally different businesses, and the expertise that makes project logistics work lives in people, in networks of people, not in warehouses or algorithms.

That is a genuine competitive advantage. And it becomes stronger, not weaker, when combined with data and AI.

The boardroom is already moving

A new global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, surveying 2,000 CEOs worldwide, including 450 from Europe, shows how fast the leadership landscape is shifting. In 2025, 24% of European organisations had a Chief AI Officer. Today that figure stands at 76%. In one year.

60% of European CEOs now make major strategic decisions based on AI-generated input. 83% say all business leaders must become technology experts within their own domain. And 77% report that talent and technology leadership roles are increasingly converging.

The most striking finding: 81% of European CEOs say the success of AI depends more on their people than on the technology itself.

This is the insight that changes everything for logistics networks. AI does not replace the expert. It multiplies them. The network that invests in both its people and its data will be the one that compounds its advantage year after year. The one that does neither will find itself unable to compete, not against Amazon, but against the forwarder next door who started six months earlier.

The honest reality

BCG's January 2026 survey of 180+ logistics providers is candid about where the industry stands: only 6% of European logistics companies have embedded AI into core operations at scale. The main barriers are not technology or budget. They are capability gaps and unclear ROI.

And the IBM study adds the human dimension: 29% of employees will need retraining for a different role by 2028. 53% will need to upskill to perform their current role more effectively.

The honest reading of these numbers is that most logistics companies, networks included, have not yet invested sufficiently in either direction. Not in training the human, and not in feeding the machine. Both are needed. Neither is optional.

The good news is that the window is still open. The companies that move now, that start building the combination of human expertise and digital capability, are the ones that will define the next decade of project logistics.

The combination is the opportunity

Amazon's advantage is breadth and scale. A logistics network's advantage is depth and trust. The opportunity is to bring data and AI into that depth, to make the expert faster, sharper and more consistent, and to ensure that knowledge stays in the organisation when people move on.

This does not require a thirty-year programme. It requires a clear starting point: invest in people first, build digital capability around them. Train the human and feed the machine, at the same time and with the same urgency.

The networks that embrace this approach will not be competing with Amazon. They will be offering something Amazon structurally cannot: expert-led, data-backed guidance on the most complex logistics challenges in the world.

That is not a niche. That is a business.

Loxygen supports logistics professionals and networks through training programmes, knowledge development and digital capability building. We work with forwarders, networks and project cargo specialists to close the gap between human expertise and machine intelligence, in formats that fit the reality of a working logistics operation.

Sources: IBM Institute for Business Value, CEO Study 2026 · BCG / Alpega, AI Is Already Moving the Logistics Industry Forward, January 2026 · Amazon Supply Chain Services launch, May 2026 · Value Chain, CEO's herstructureren C-suite in AI-tijdperk, 5 May 2026