The Logistics of Logistics The Road Ahead: What Trimble Innovations Mean for Transportation with Jonah McIntire
Jonah McIntire is Chief Product and Technology Officer at Trimble. He joined Transporeon in June 2021 and quickly led a succession of larger product organisations in the sourcing & data insights areas of the company. Known for his broad international experience, having lived and worked in 13 countries, Jonah's prior experience includes running global logistics for Build-a-Bear Workshop, launching business units for Manhattan Associates and Panalpina, and writing a university textbook on supply chain visibility. He also founded two companies and led them to successful acquisitions: Clear Abacus, an early cloud computing transport optimisation solution acquired by GT Nexus; and TNX Logistics, a spot procurement data science SaaS acquired by Transporeon. He is also a regular guest author in industry journals, hosts the popular Logistics Tribe podcast, and maintains a widely read industry newsletter on logistics technology.
About Trimble TransportationTrimble Transportation provides fleets with solutions to create a fully integrated supply chain. With an intelligent ecosystem of products and services, Trimble Transportation enables customers to embrace the rapid technological evolution of the industry and connect all aspects of transportation and logistics — trucks, drivers, back office, freight and assets. Trimble Transportation delivers an open, scalable platform to help customers make more informed decisions and maximize performance, visibility and safety.
Key Takeaways: The Road Ahead: What Trimble Innovations Mean for Transportation- In "The Road Ahead: What Trimble Innovations Mean for Transportation", Joe Lynch and Jonah McIntire, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Trimble, discuss Trimble's open, scalable platform that connects every aspect of the supply chain—from trucks and drivers to the back office—by serving as a reliable "system of record" that integrates practical AI innovation to help fleets maximize performance, visibility, and safety.
- The Responsibility of the Incumbent: Unlike startups that lead with "bombastic" promises, Trimble prioritizes its role as the foundational "system of record" for the world's largest supply chains, where stability and reliability are non-negotiable.
- A "Safety-First" AI Philosophy: Because Trimble's software manages critical infrastructure and multi-billion dollar logistics networks, their innovation roadmap is built on a "safety-first" framework to ensure no disruption to global commerce.
- The Three-Phase AI Maturity Model: Trimble is following a logical, tiered progression into the AI age: starting with internal adoption, moving to AI-enhanced features, and ultimately launching AI-native applications.
- "Eating Their Own Cooking": Before shipping AI solutions to customers, Trimble utilizes AI internally to refine the technology, ensuring they can provide honest, experience-based guidance to their partners.
- Enhancing the Proven vs. Chasing the New: A core pillar of their current strategy is adding AI-powered features to existing, trusted solutions (like TMW.Suite or TMT) to provide immediate value without requiring a total system overhaul.
- The Shift to AI-Native Applications: The next frontier for Trimble is the development of applications built from the ground up on AI architectures, designed to solve complex logistics problems that traditional logic-based software cannot.
- Prioritizing Practicality Over Hype: Trimble's focus remains squarely on the "practical uses" of AI—solving real-world friction in dispatch, maintenance, and routing—rather than following fleeting technology trends.
- Innovation as Change Management: Trimble recognizes that the hardest part of the AI transition isn't the code; it's the human element. Their strategy includes a heavy focus on onboarding, training, and building the "Customer Trust" necessary for long-term adoption.
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