About The Conveyor

Supply chain news, with a focus on helping you improve yours.

Supply chains are changing fast. Tariffs are pushing factories to new countries, AI is entering planning and procurement, and robots are showing up in more warehouses. Customers expect orders faster and cheaper than before.

If you run a supply chain, each of these is a decision you have to make. Switch the supplier or wait it out. Reroute or absorb the delay. Buy the software or keep the spreadsheet. Working out what a story means for your own network takes hours of digging that nobody has time for.

The Conveyor is a news publication for supply chain professionals. We cover the news and write it for the person who has to act on it.

Join us, and make your next supply chain decision with confidence.

From the founder

Gowtham Ramachandran

Founder and writer

Hi, I'm Gowtham, and I started The Conveyor.

For seven years I ran a PCB manufacturing company in Toronto. Circuit boards, components from overseas, customers across North America. For most of that time I barely thought about my supply chain, because it just worked.

Then COVID hit and it broke all at once. Components I had ordered for years had no delivery date. Prices doubled overnight. Freight went from a line item to the biggest number on the invoice. I had questions with real money on them. Stockpile or wait? Switch suppliers? Renegotiate every contract?

So I read the news, like everyone did. Port delays, chip shortages, rates exploding. It was good at telling me what was happening. It never told me what to do about it.

What helped was a ten-minute call with another operator who had hit the same wall. He told me what he tried, what worked and what blew up in his face. That call was worth more than every headline I read that year, and I kept making calls like it. The deeper I dug, the more I saw this would last. Where things get made, how they move and what customers expect were all shifting at once.

The business eventually wound down. The digging didn't stop, so I made it my job. The Conveyor is where I put what I find, so the next operator staring at a broken supply chain has somewhere to start.

I'm glad you're here.