Rehearsal on a digital twin How AI reinvents supply chain resilience
Article | 2026-4-3
5 minute read
The success formula known as “efficiency”—long considered the cornerstone of global supply chains—is rapidly reaching its expiration date. This is no exaggeration. Rising geopolitical tensions, the erosion of global order, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events have revealed a stark truth: we now operate in an era of “permacrisis.”
For decades, global supply chains achieved exceptional efficiency through just‑in‑time systems and lean production—models built on the implicit assumption that people, goods, and information would flow freely and predictably. As these foundations fracture, supply chains optimized solely for efficiency are revealing a critical fragility: even small disruptions can cause widespread dysfunction.
Today, supply chain leadership has evolved beyond mere operational optimization and cost reduction. It is now fundamentally defined by a critical question: "Can our business not only survive an unprecedented crisis but also emerge stronger and continue its growth trajectory?"
BI tools and demand‑forecasting models based on past data are no longer enough to address today’s challenges. What is required in an age of uncertainty is the ability to proactively rehearse innumerable future disruptions, take strategic actions in advance to maximize value, and secure resilience by design.
This is where digital rehearsal provides a breakthrough. By recreating real‑world supply chains within a high‑fidelity digital twin and applying AI, organizations can rapidly and precisely uncover hidden causal relationships in their data. Even highly complex scenarios—such as “What happens if a major strait is closed for three months?”—can be evaluated quantitatively and objectively across three stages:
1. risk scenario analysis
2. scenario forecasting
3. strategy design
For companies navigating the vast uncertainty of today’s world, insights generated through AI × digital rehearsal become a lighthouse guiding them toward their desired future.
This article explores global supply chain trends, the unique strengths of Fujitsu’s digital rehearsal, and three steps to maximize its value. The future is not something to predict— it is something to design, transform, and choose.
Section 1: A fragile reality — why supply chain transformation can no longer wait
Supply chain vulnerability has become a universal management challenge across industries and regions. This shift in supply chain priorities is set against the backdrop of a significant turning point in globalization—a force that, for decades, reliably fueled global economic growth.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026*1, uncertainty is the defining theme of the years ahead. Half of surveyed experts expect global economic conditions to be “turbulent” or “storm‑like” over the next two years, with the outlook worsening over the decade. The report also warns that the retreat of multilateralism and the rise of protectionism are straining long‑standing trade and investment relationships, increasing the likelihood of conflict.
The scale of macro‑environmental impact on businesses is growing each year. The Allianz Risk Barometer 2026*2 places “business interruption”—including supply chain disruption—among the top three global threats. The report highlights that supply chains are under “unprecedented pressure,” with only 3% of companies viewing their supply chains as “highly resilient.”
The evidence is undeniable: the traditional supply chain model has served its purpose and can no longer meet today's demands. Therefore, transitioning to a next-generation, adaptive model—one capable of proactively identifying complex risks and responding with agility—is not merely an option, but a strategic imperative for corporate survival and sustainable growth.
Section 2: Unlocking future insight with digital rehearsal
To build next‑generation supply chains, prediction alone is not enough. What organizations truly need is the ability to rehearse as many futures as possible—extracting insight, preparing multiple responses, and ensuring readiness for any scenario.
Traditional simulations test predefined “if A, then B” logic. Fujitsu’s digital rehearsal fundamentally advances this approach. Powered by AI, it identifies unknown risk factors and their intermediate causal chains, presenting new scenarios such as “If X occurs, it triggers Y and leads to Z.” Rather than guessing correlations, it uncovers the causal mechanisms behind complex events.
Through multiple PoCs with global enterprises, digital rehearsal has already demonstrated its ability to enhance business foresight. The following three technology pillars underpin its capabilities.
Digital rehearsal operates on a digital twin—a virtual environment mirroring real‑world systems—and drives AI to uncover cause‑and‑effect relationships. Unlike generative AI, which infers likely outcomes from linguistic patterns, digital rehearsal can model complex causal chains found in physical and economic systems.
It also integrates public and enterprise data in real time, enabling fast, objective, multi‑angle evaluation of how factors such as geopolitical risks, climate change, and urban development influence the supply chain—and then proposes actionable improvements.
・Risk scenario analysis
This capability visualizes how external disruptions trigger cascading effects throughout the supply chain. For instance, it can model scenarios such as a regional conflict, revealing potential impacts like transport delays, rising freight rates, or operational losses. Critically, accurately discerning the causal pathways—why and how these outcomes materialize—is exceedingly complex without advanced tools.
Digital Rehearsal addresses a critical limitation of conventional generative AI by extracting and chaining pivotal intermediate causal factors (Figure 3). For instance, consider the "cause" of a conflict and the "result" of rising freight rates. Between these points, numerous interconnected causal factors might emerge, such as navigation risks, heightened insurance premiums, economic sanctions, port congestion, vessel shortages, and shipping delays.
By comprehensively analyzing these interconnected factors, quantifying their individual likelihoods, and constructing an explainable causal chain, organizations gain unprecedented clarity. This enables them to proactively identify strategic bottlenecks and implement agile countermeasures—such as switching suppliers or selecting alternative routes—significantly ahead of competitors.
・Scenario forecasting
This capability predicts the mid- to long-term evolution of metrics like freight rates for every scenario derived from our causal analysis (Figure 4). It maps potential futures—such as "stabilizing within a year," "accelerating military escalation," or "remaining manageable"—and provides corresponding time-series projections based on identified causal factors.
Critically, the model robustly handles uneven data by estimating missing values from similar historical patterns. This ensures objective, multi-perspective insights, elevating decision-making beyond subjective expert judgment.
In a pivotal Proof of Concept, the system precisely anticipated a rapid surge in freight rates across several scenarios. The client emphasized a key outcome: democratizing insights by moving from intuition-driven, individual processes to a reproducible system, which significantly bolstered their organizational intelligence.
・Strategy design
Leveraging Fujitsu’s proprietary evolutionary computing, Digital Rehearsal generates transformative improvement strategies for your supply chain model. This technology mimics biological evolution to discover optimal solutions that foster resilience.
In scenarios like rising freight rates, the system delivers concrete, proactive actions—from adjusting production to diversifying transport modes, changing suppliers, or consolidating facilities. The AI rigorously simulates these options, always with the goal of minimizing opportunity loss.
Through an exhaustive exploration of thousands of possibilities, Digital Rehearsal uncovers optimal strategies often imperceptible to human analysis alone, providing uniquely impactful and actionable pathways forward (Figure 5).
Fujitsu is dedicated to the continuous evolution of Digital Rehearsal, fostering strategic collaborations with ecosystem partners. Our future vision encompasses seamless integration with new platforms designed for unifying external risk signals and internal enterprise data, ensuring centralized and proactive risk detection, analysis, and response. We also foresee the strategic introduction of agent-based AI, which will enable autonomous planning and execution across complex systems, thereby greatly enhancing Digital Rehearsal's strategic impact.
We firmly believe that Fujitsu's integrated capability to develop, operate, and implement diverse advanced technologies is the bedrock upon which we deliver the transformative value of "rehearsing the future."
Section 3: Conclusion — three steps to turn digital rehearsal into strategic advantage
In an era of unprecedented uncertainty, an organization's competitive edge is substantially determined by its ability to define the essential questions it must answer and to continuously transform in pursuit of those solutions. To optimally leverage Digital Rehearsal and translate it into a decisive competitive advantage, we propose these three critical steps:
Step 1: Forge a unified data foundation and continuously define critical questions
Transformation begins with a precise understanding of your own business. It is imperative to unify fragmented internal and external supply chain data, ensuring its cleanliness, accuracy, and high quality to form a reliable information base for confident decision-making.
Simultaneously, continuously defining "what are the most critical questions our organization must solve?" is paramount. As risks emerge simultaneously and evolve rapidly, this ongoing questioning and refined thinking become the unshakeable foundation for resilient transformation.
Step 2: Conduct targeted rehearsals to uncover strategic insights
Based on these defined questions, initiate small-scale Proofs of Concept (PoCs)—"mini-rehearsals"—in your most critical areas. The primary objective of early PoCs should not be immediate short-term ROI, but rather the acquisition of strategic insights, revealing previously unseen vulnerabilities and unlocking new business opportunities. A single, profound realization that "our assumptions were flawed" can be the most valuable investment toward significant long-term returns, providing powerful momentum for meaningful change.
Step 3: Embed intelligence organization-wide and cultivate a dynamic learning culture
Elevate the conviction gained from early successes into a company-wide strategic capability. Formally incorporate the proven Digital Rehearsal process into supply chain governance and executive meeting agendas. The true value emerges when data scientists, domain experts, and leadership unite to continuously question, debate, learn—and at times, even fail—as an embedded corporate cultural cycle. Simply implementing tools is not enough. To truly harness the insights from Digital Rehearsal for strategic decision-making, people must first evolve. This necessitates recruiting and developing specialized talent, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and implementing structural reforms that span both business processes and IT architecture.
Designing the future, not merely predicting it
The future is no longer something to passively predict. It is a future to actively design—one where organizations choose their desired path from countless possibilities and shape a resilient trajectory forward with deliberate intent. Securing resilience is no longer merely a cost; it is now a fundamental source for creating future corporate value. The resolve for transformation and its practical application are the very first steps toward that future.
Daisuke Suzuki
Senior Director, Head of Corporate Insight Department, Fujitsu Limited
Daisuke Suzuki joined Fujitsu in March 2024, following roles at Nikkei Inc. and PwC Japan. At Nikkei Inc., he spent approximately 18 years as a staff writer and editor, covering policy at central government agencies such as the Ministry of Finance, Financial Services Agency, and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, as well as industries including energy and startups. At PwC Japan, he led the planning, editing, and writing of Thought Leadership content as a Manager. He assumed his current position in April 2025.
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