Download ReGlobalization White Paper 
The Western Hemisphere Needs a Nerve System that Moves Beyond Dashboards
For five decades, I’ve worked on building global supply chains. The last few years have convinced me that the Western Hemisphere needs a Digital Supply Chain Command Center, moving beyond control towers.
Because disruptions – trade wars, tariffs, a pandemic and natural disasters – have revealed that visibility is not enough. Supply chain performance requires actionability and execution.
It also requires optionality. I’ve repeatedly written about how optionality is critical. Companies and countries need alternative geographies for sourcing, production, logistics and transportation.
That’s why I think the nation of Panama should take the lead in developing a Digital Supply Chain Command Center to serve the Western Hemisphere. A Panamanian national Digital Supply Chain Command Center can orchestrate flows across oceans, land borders and economies.
Concurrent command center operations in the Dominican Republic and the Southeast United States can keep supply chains delivering if disasters – manmade or otherwise – strike one geography.
What Is a Digital Supply Chain Command Center?
For decades, control towers have given us visibility – they tell us where shipments are and when problems crop up.
These towers let leaders track containers, trucks and planes across the world. That was a good start, but that wasn’t enough. Because visibility without action is like watching a storm on radar and hoping it misses your house. A Digital Supply Chain Command Center gives you power, in essence, to move the storm. It goes beyond dashboards to pair visibility with actionability.
By combining artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT sensors and cloud computing, it creates a real-time “nerve system” for your supply chain. Instead of simply showing you a container stuck at port, the system provides solutions. The center can reroute shipments or reallocate inventory. And AI tools can accomplish much of that autonomously.
A Panamanian Digital Supply Chain Command Center would not belong to one company. It would serve as a national digital backbone, a neutral hub that global shippers, retailers, 3PLs and manufacturers can plug into. Enterprises could access to shared data, predictive analytics and orchestration tools that magnify the value of their own networks. Just as the canal itself is a public good that thousands of firms transit, the command center would be a shared platform that powers private success.
Think of it as the brain of your supply chain. The center ingests massive amounts of live data from ports, airports, customs agencies, carriers, warehouses, retailers and even satellites. Then the system uses AI and IoT sensors to break many supply chain bottlenecks.
If weather delays a ship, the command center can reroute critical cargo to air. A warehouse is short-staffed? The system requests flexible labor and adjusts distribution flows. Analyzing disruptions before they hit helps execute corrective actions across partners, carriers and customers.
Human minds can’t keep up with all the strikes, skilled labor shortages, poor demand forecasting and excess or insufficient stock that bedevils supply chains. But a true command center can do that and more, escalating critical issues for human intervention. And those humans would have the advanced analytics to make better, more informed decisions.
People still make the big calls, but the system resolves the vast majority of day-to-day disruptions automatically.
That difference is critical in today’s world of perpetual disruption. Do you really think tariffs are going away anytime soon? Are you sure where the next hurricane will hit or shooting war will start? Even the canal itself has to deal with the occasional drought.
That’s the promise of a Digital Supply Chain Command Center – the power to fix numerous problems before customers even notice.
This is the leap from dashboards to orchestration. And it’s the leap the Americas must take.
Optionality Across Panama, the Dominican and U.S. Ensures Continuity
Optionality shines when the level of disruption rises.
That’s why Panama should anchor the Western Hemisphere Digital Supply Chain Command Center. The Dominican Republic should complement it. A Southeastern U.S. node would ensure resilience.
After all, none of those locations are 100% safe from natural disaster. And neither has everything necessary for perfect supply chain operations.
Let’s take hurricanes. Only one, Hurricane Martha in 1969, has ever made landfall in Panama. That makes Panama perhaps the safest country of the bunch. But the isthmus has suffered from heavy rains and flooding from the outer bands of other storms.
Similarly, the north coast of the Dominican Republic is somewhat sheltered from hurricanes, which generally make landfall along the eastern or southern coasts. The Cordillera Central and/or Cordillera Septentrional mountain ranges, which rise inland, act as natural barriers, weakening those storms. However, the north coast still can suffer heavy rainfall, flooding, wind damage and storm surge.
If Panama is knocked offline – whether by flood, cyberattack, labor shortage or some other unforeseen event – the Dominican Republic and the Southeastern U.S. can step in, ensuring continuity.
Optionality isn’t redundancy for redundancy’s sake. It’s survival, resilience and good business.
Why Panama Is the Irreplaceable Foundation for Orchestration
Panama should anchor the Digital Supply Chain Command Center because it is uniquely blessed. It’s the only nation that directly connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Together, those two oceans cover 70% of the world’s surface, and 5-6% of global trade passes through the canal.
That makes the Panama Canal one of the great feats of human engineering, shaving 8,000 miles off shipping routes. And the canal is of vital importance to the United States, as the U.S. is the origin or destination for nearly three-fourths of the ships that pass through.
Panama also boasts world-class air connectivity through Tocumen International Airport, ports on both coasts, a railway across the isthmus, free trade zones and a growing logistics sector that already contributes more than 11% of GDP.
Despite all these blessings, Panama has its shortfalls. In fact, eCommerce is a major Achilles’ heel.
Most U.S. consumers expect one- to two-day delivery. Panama cannot hit those timelines for the United States.
Panama also struggles with labor. The country’s growing logistics and canal industries already soak up much of its workforce. Many companies report difficulties finding the right people.
Tompkins Ventures has Panamanian 3PL partners who can provide light and value-added manufacturing. Operations like cutting, re-packaging, relabeling, kit assembly, quality control and inventory management that add value through customization, compliance/quality control or convenience are available.
Still, most leaders in Panama prefer deploying scarce labor to support canal operations.
That’s where the Dominican Republic comes in.
The Dominican Republic Offers eCommerce and Labor Strength
The Dominican Republic has a lot of what Panama lacks.
First, location. Sitting just 800 miles from Miami, the Dominican Republic is ideally positioned for two-day delivery to the Eastern U.S. That’s the sweet spot for Amazon-style consumer expectations. And about 80% of the U.S. population lives east of the Mississippi River.
Second, labor. The Dominican Republic has virtually unlimited labor pools. Dozens of free trade zones and a slightly stronger education base help support that labor force. Free trade agreements with both the U.S. and Europe give it preferential access to major markets.
Third, land. Panama is small and crowded; the Dominican Republic has room to grow port capacity and logistics parks.
Those strengths allow the Dominican Republic to provide more extensive light and value-added manufacturing.
For the Dominican Republic, participation would mean more than just attracting warehouses and factories. By linking into Panama’s national platform, the country can offer enterprises plug-and-play fulfillment capacity and labor optionality. Any business – from a multinational to a fast-growth eCommerce brand – could tap into the Dominican Republic’s free trade zones, logistics parks and value-added services through the command center interface. Companies could access new capacity without building an entire digital system from scratch.
Put these together, and Panama plus the Dominican Republic form a complementary powerhouse. Panama focuses its labor on the supply chain (the canal, its ports and high-value digital command functions). The Dominican Republic provides the fulfillment muscle for East Coast eCommerce, light manufacturing and value-added logistics.
The Southeastern U.S. Adds Resilience and Reach
The third leg of the stool belongs in the Southeastern United States.
Miami is the likely culprit, but land is scarce and expensive. So Atlanta, Savannah or Charleston could also make sense. This location provides additional insurance against disruption.
And with today’s geopolitical sensitivity and rising nationalism, a U.S. location just makes sense.
The U.S. node reinforces that this is not a proprietary system but a hemispheric public-private network. American companies, as well as Latin American exporters, can connect through Miami, Atlanta, Savannah or Charleston to ensure continuity when storms, labor shortages or geopolitical tensions arise.
This access point gives enterprises confidence that their supply chain orchestration has a reliable foothold on U.S. soil, subject to U.S. laws and security standards, while still integrated with the Panama-led backbone.
The Payoff Includes Prosperity Across the Americas
What would this Digital Supply Chain Command Center mean for the hemisphere?
- Resiliency: Disruptions from weather, strikes or geopolitics would no longer cripple trade. The system reroutes and rebalances automatically.
- Efficiency: Predictive planning cuts delays, reduces inventory and slashes transportation costs.
- Sustainability: AI-optimized routing lowers fuel use and emissions.
- Jobs: High-value digital jobs in Panama, fulfillment and light manufacturing jobs in the Dominican Republic and advanced logistics jobs in the U.S. Southeast
- Growth: Like Singapore, Panama and the Dominican Republic can elevate national prosperity by becoming hubs not just of trade, but of intelligence and orchestration.
This is not pie in the sky. Panama already hosts 185 multinational headquarters. The Dominican Republic is already the Caribbean’s largest economy. What’s missing is a coordinated leap from visibility to actionability.
Imagine ships entering the canal, pre-cleared with AI-verified customs paperwork. Picture cargo flying into Tocumen, routed seamlessly into Dominican fulfillment centers for next-day delivery to New York or Atlanta. Imagine secured transactions that eliminate fraud and paperwork delays.
Visualize orchestration handling cross-canal traffic via a combination of ships and rail during the next drought situation in Panama. Think of digital twins simulating disruptions before they happen, ensuring goods flow uninterrupted across oceans and borders.
That is the Digital Supply Chain Command Center. That is the vision the Western Hemisphere must seize.
It’s Time for the Americas to Build a Digital Supply Chain Brain
The Western Hemisphere stands at a crossroads – not just of oceans, but of history.
We can stick with control towers, dashboards and visibility. If we do, we’ll keep watching disruptions pile up, helpless as storms, tariffs, pandemics and politics knock supply chains sideways.
Or we can build a Digital Supply Chain Command Center. We can pair visibility with execution and orchestrate flows. We can anchor this system in Panama, complement it with the Dominican Republic and safeguard it with the Southeastern U.S.
This is the right answer for the Americas. Not just for today, but for decades to come.
Related Reading
- From 1 Factory for the World to the World Is Your Factory
- Adam Smith Wants You to Redesign Your Supply Chains
- The Panama Canal: Yet Another Supply Chain Problem
Jim Tompkins, Chairman of Tompkins Ventures, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over five decades, he has designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, enhancing the growth of numerous companies. He previously built Tompkins International from a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm. Jim earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.
Excellent article, and a clear vision we share. Thank you to put it this clear. The future is bright.