Manoj Bhalerao is a global supply chain and transportation expert, recognized for creating advanced managed services solutions and leading transformation in food logistics networks worldwide.
With nearly 20 years of experience, Bhalerao has held leadership roles at KPMG and other Fortune 500 companies, designing award-winning initiatives in global trade compliance, managed transportation, and supply chain resilience.
He currently serves as senior manager of Hub Group, responsible for leading advanced transportation managed service and supply chain optimization initiatives for large-scale logistics and supply chain operations for 60-plus customers. His day-to-day responsibilities blend high-level strategy with direct operational oversight to maximize efficiency, resilience, and regulatory compliance across multimodal logistics networks.
On a typical day, he oversees the management and continuous improvement of managed transportation services platforms; analyzes transportation data and leverages technologies; designs and implements frameworks for clients moving food, perishables, and agricultural products nationally and internationally; collaborates with IT, operations, procurement, and compliance teams globally to streamline processes, implement best practices, and troubleshoot high-priority issues in real time; provides executive guidance, change management, and training for diverse stakeholders; develops and refines governance structures, performance dashboards, and KPI monitoring systems; and maintains ongoing engagement with industry organizations.
For instance, Bhalerao completed the Wharton CTO Program, which includes certificates in Executive Presence and Influence, Technology Acceleration. He is an NCBFAA-Certified Customs Specialist, a Six Sigma Black Belt (Transportation Rates Optimization), ITIL Foundation-certified, and an Oracle Transportation Management Certified Implementation Specialist. He's also a Chartered Member of CILT and an honored Fellow of the Institute of Supply Chain Management (IoSCM).
In the next 12 months, Bhalerao is committed to scaling digital twin and AI analytics in food logistics; expanding next-generation trade compliance services; and continuing his industry leadership and advocacy.
Bhalerao sits down with Marina Mayer, editor-in-chief of Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive and co-founder of the Women in Supply Chain Forum, to talk about the future of digital twins and AI analytics in the cold chain.
Food Logistics: Let’s first talk about you. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your journey to get to this current stage in your career?
Manoj Bhalerao: I have spent nearly two decades at the intersection of transportation, supply chain technology, global trade compliance, and operational transformation. I began my career as an engineer focused on improving transportation systems and processes. Over time, I progressed into leadership roles where I could design end-to-end operating models that connect technology, process discipline, data, governance, and business strategy.
My experience spans energy, automotive, retail, professional services, and food-related supply chains. Working across these industries taught me that the fundamental logistics challenges are universal: service, capacity, cost, risk, and execution. However, the consequences of failure vary considerably. In food and cold chain networks, for example, timing and visibility are not simply operational measures; they can directly affect product availability, freshness, waste, and customer trust.
A key early milestone was leading a Six Sigma Black Belt transportation rate-management initiative that replaced a highly manual, spot-bid-oriented process with a lane-based, system-supported decision framework. The work substantially reduced spot bidding and generated approximately 12% transportation cost improvement across thousands of truckloads. Elements of that approach were later adapted for a much larger automotive transportation network, demonstrating that the framework could be applied beyond one organization or operating environment.
Another important part of my work has involved developing practical frameworks for complex global trade and supply chain compliance issues. This included technology-enabled trade-compliance managed services, as well as an operational framework for addressing forced labor due diligence and UFLPA-related import risk. My contribution was to translate complex regulatory expectations into a repeatable business process that connected supplier risk, traceability, documentation, escalation, governance, and operational decision-making.
More recently, I completed Wharton’s Chief Technology Officer program, which expanded my perspective from solving individual operational problems to thinking more deliberately about technology strategy, enterprise architecture, innovation, governance, and organizational adoption. Today, my focus is on advancing transportation networks that are more data-driven, resilient, transparent, responsible, and adaptable.
Food Logistics: One of the things outlined in your submission is how you designed and launched a global managed services platform for KPMG, helping clients across the food, agriculture, and cold chain sectors to efficiently utilize over 50 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) worldwide. What does this entail, and why is this important?
Bhalerao: In a prior professional services role, I designed and helped launch a global managed-services platform that integrated trade-compliance processes with ERP (enterprise resource planning), sourcing, and logistics decision-making. The central objective was to help companies manage the complexity of international trade more consistently across products, suppliers, countries, and Free Trade Agreements.
The work involved creating a repeatable operating model for product classification, rules-of-origin assessment, supplier documentation, data validation, qualification analysis, and audit readiness. Rather than allowing each region or business unit to apply a disconnected process, the platform established common data standards, governance, workflows, and technology-enabled controls. This enabled organizations to determine where products could qualify for preferential trade treatment and to manage the evidence required to support those determinations.
A distinct extension of this work involved creating a practical framework for managing forced labor due diligence and UFLPA-related import-compliance risk. UFLPA considerations cannot be addressed effectively through a basic checklist because the required analysis may involve upstream supplier information, supply-chain traceability, country of origin and sourcing data, documentation quality, cross-functional judgment, and escalation decisions.
My contribution was to organize those requirements into a repeatable operating model. It created a structured approach for identifying higher-risk situations, defining the information and documentation needed for review, assigning accountability among procurement, supply chain, logistics, and compliance stakeholders, escalating exceptions, and documenting the final decision. The originality was not in the regulation itself; it was in translating a complex regulatory and ethical obligation into a usable, scalable decision framework for business operations.
This matters especially for food, agriculture, and cold chain businesses because they often operate with perishable products, narrow margins, volatile sourcing conditions, and strict service requirements. Well-designed trade and import-compliance processes can reduce avoidable duty exposure, improve landed-cost visibility, support informed sourcing decisions, reduce manual effort, and strengthen the organization’s ability to manage regulatory and ethical risk responsibly.
Food Logistics: You have led the transformation of a national food retailer’s transportation network, which impacted thousands of daily store shipments. Walk us through what this looks like.
Bhalerao: The fundamental challenge in a high-volume retail transportation environment is that store replenishment cannot be managed as a series of isolated shipments. It must be managed as an interconnected network where service windows, equipment constraints, carrier capacity, delivery priorities, inventory considerations, and customer expectations all interact.
In a prior transformation effort supporting a large retail distribution environment, we began by developing a detailed view of network flows: shipment volumes, lane structures, equipment requirements, delivery windows, carrier performance, service exceptions, and operating constraints. That baseline allowed the team to distinguish structural issues from daily operational noise and to identify where planning decisions were being made manually or inconsistently.
We then applied disciplined transportation management practices: clearer lane design, more structured rate architecture, stronger carrier selection logic, exception visibility, and performance measurement. The objective was not simply to automate transactions. It was to create a more reliable decision framework that helped transportation teams manage service, cost, and capacity with greater consistency.
The resulting model supported high daily store shipment volumes with stronger operational visibility, fewer manual interventions, and a stronger foundation for service reliability. The larger lesson is that transportation transformation works best when process design, master data quality, technology configuration, governance, and stakeholder adoption are treated as a single integrated program.
Food Logistics: One of the goals outlined in your application is scale digital twin and AI analytics in food logistics. Why are these emerging technologies important to the future of food logistics?
Bhalerao: Food logistics is highly sensitive to time, temperature, demand variability, capacity disruptions, weather, and service execution. A late or poorly managed shipment can lead to consequences beyond freight costs, including empty shelves, product loss, customer dissatisfaction, and avoidable waste. The industry needs tools that help teams recognize risk earlier and test alternatives before disruption reaches the physical network.
A digital twin is a living, data-informed representation of a transportation or supply-chain network. It can model lanes, volume patterns, assets, service windows, equipment types, capacity conditions, costs, and operational constraints. This allows teams to test scenarios such as severe weather, loss of carrier capacity, distribution center disruptions, demand spikes, or routing changes before committing to a decision in the live network.
AI and advanced analytics can add predictive capability to that model. By analyzing historical shipment performance, dwell time, carrier reliability, weather patterns, demand signals, supplier conditions, and operational exceptions, AI can help identify where risk is likely to emerge. It can then support actions such as earlier tendering, alternative capacity planning, revised routing, targeted escalation, or proactive customer communication.
The objective is not to replace experienced transportation professionals. It is to give them timely, actionable intelligence so they can make stronger decisions under pressure. For food shippers, that can mean fewer stockouts, reduced spoilage, better use of refrigerated capacity, improved service reliability, and a more sustainable network.
There is also an important governance dimension. As AI becomes more embedded in supply-chain decisions, organizations need data quality, transparent decision rules, appropriate human oversight, and responsible-use controls. That is especially important where decisions affect trade compliance, supplier risk, ethical sourcing, or customer commitments.
Food Logistics: The Top Transportation Professional category recognizes professionals in the transportation space. What advice do you have for other transportation professionals?
Bhalerao: First, stay close to the data. The most meaningful improvements usually begin with understanding what is actually occurring in the network, rather than relying on assumptions. That means understanding the drivers behind on-time performance, dwell time, tender acceptance, cost per shipment or case, accessorials, damage, exceptions, capacity utilization, and service failures.
Second, become fluent in both operational and executive language. Transportation leaders need to understand the realities faced by planners, drivers, carriers, warehouses, suppliers, and customers. At the same time, they must translate those operational details into strategic outcomes: service, working capital, product availability, cost-to-serve, risk exposure, resilience, and business continuity.
Third, do not treat technology as only an IT project. Whether the initiative involves a transportation-management system, analytics platform, routing solution, automation workflow, trade-compliance system, or AI capability, success depends on people and process. Even an excellent solution can fail if users do not understand its purpose, master data is unreliable, decision ownership is unclear, or the organization has not designed effective exception-management procedures.
Finally, keep ethics, sustainability, and governance in the conversation. The definition of a high-performing transportation network is changing. Cost and service remain essential, but so do supply-chain transparency, responsible sourcing, labor practices, carbon intensity, resilience, and the ability to demonstrate sound governance. Future leaders will need to balance all of these dimensions rather than optimize one metric in isolation.
Food Logistics: What additional strengths, achievements, and goals would you like to share?
Bhalerao: A consistent theme throughout my career has been converting complex logistics, technology, and compliance challenges into practical, scalable operating models. I am particularly interested in work that combines process improvement, enterprise technology, analytical rigor, risk governance, and change management because sustainable results require all of those elements.
My experience includes developing transportation rate-management frameworks, designing technology-enabled trade-compliance services, creating an operational framework for UFLPA-related supplier and import-risk due diligence, improving sourcing and import-risk controls, and supporting logistics transformation programs across multiple industries.
In each case, the objective has been similar: create a repeatable framework that reduces avoidable manual work, improves data quality and decision-making, strengthens accountability and governance, and produces measurable operational or financial value. The UFLPA work is particularly meaningful to me because it demonstrates that supply-chain leadership is not only about moving goods efficiently. It is also about ensuring that organizations have disciplined, evidence-based processes for managing ethical and regulatory risk.
I also believe that professional impact should extend beyond a single employer or project. I contribute through industry conferences, professional knowledge-sharing, standards-oriented collaboration, and service on the Oracle Transportation Management Special Interest Group Board of Directors. These activities allow me to exchange ideas with peers, contribute to the evolution of transportation-management practices, and help elevate the profession more broadly.
Looking ahead, I want to continue advancing intelligent, resilient, transparent, and humane supply chains. I am especially interested in the responsible application of AI, digital twin capabilities, global trade intelligence, transportation automation, and risk governance frameworks to reduce waste, improve visibility, manage disruption, strengthen responsible sourcing, and improve how food and essential goods move through global networks.
*The views expressed are personal professional perspectives based on the interviewee’s career experience and do not necessarily represent the views, strategies, customers, or operations of any current or former employer.
