The articles in this year’s volume focus on FMI’s Imperative Issues Framework, contextualizing immediate needs such as supply chain disruption and resiliency, workforce challenges; and imperative issues such as changing marketplace and societal dynamics, evolving consumer behaviors, rising environmental, social, and governance expectations; and foundational issues around the accelerating transformation of technology.

In fact, since 2019, most food retailers tell FMI that they have been experimenting with and implementing new technologies to improve customer experience and efficiency, to reduce costs while relieving margin pressures, to shore up labor constraints, and to improve ecommerce capabilities. Eighty-five percent of retailers report continuing to experiment with multiple new technologies and more than a third of suppliers report using artificial intelligence (AI) to leverage customer data. Boardroom will explore some of these investments — from how AI early adopters are your company’s biggest assets to debunking AI’s impact on job industry transformation.

This is what we do; FMI and Oliver Wyman created Boardroom in 2013 to think bigger and bolder, together. We hope you find the journal articles written both by the Oliver Wyman and FMI teams to provide insightful resources as you focus on leading your organizations into the future.

By focusing on the six critical issue areas of our framework, we can better problem-solve, seize opportunities, and provide expertise to move the industry forward. We believe collaboration across the food industry — among retailers, manufacturers and other suppliers — will help accelerate readiness and enhance capabilities to drive operational excellence across many aspects of the business.

Leslie G. Sarasin

President and CEO,
FMI — The Food Industry Association

Mike Matheis

Global Industry Association,
Civic and Economic Organization Lead
Oliver Wyman