The Spring 2026 Supply Chain Forum hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Haslam College of Business in April, featured a fireside chat with Wendi Gentry-Stuenkel, senior vice president of Caterpillar Inc. Moderated by Yemisi Bolumole, Haslam’s supply chain management department head and Ryder Professor of Supply Chain Management, the session focused on how disciplined logistics strategy, global parts networks and customer-centric service models drive performance at scale.
Gentry-Stuenkel began by explaining that Caterpillar, a 101-year-old company, is far more than excavators and engines. In addition to manufacturing construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, cruise ship engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives, it is also involved in autonomous hauling, data centers and financial products and sells its lifestyle brand products in major shopping malls across China.
AI in Supply Chain
According to Gentry-Stuenkel, Caterpillar is deeply involved in AI initiatives, citing its tool Vision Work, which monitors customer equipment productivity, operational status and reliability.
“We’re ingesting all of that data every day and feeding it back out through our 150 dealers globally, so they have the right part in the right place at the right time,” Gentry-Stuenkel explained.
Bolumole then shifted to how AI and automation are impacting workers, asking, “How do you see automation and AI changing people’s roles in the future?”
Gentry-Stuenkel replied that in certain areas, lack of personnel, not parts, is Caterpillar’s greatest constraint. Of a needed 65,000 technicians, she is short 35,000. The challenge she asks herself is, “How do I make those technicians more efficient?”
The answer is with AI agents that track parts, supplier capacity and logistics risk. Gentry-Stuenkel noted that these advances free workers from boring tasks they don’t like but acknowledged that, while she is confident Caterpillar will add jobs overall, positions will be lost to new technology, and some internal jobs will become outward-facing.
“More people will be in the field, interfacing with customers and understanding their problems, because our strategy is to solve our customers’ biggest problems,” she said. “Some people can make that transition, but not all of them can.”
Leadership
Pivoting, Bolumole asked how Gentry-Stuenkel’s executive role has transformed her as a leader. The senior vice president said her advice to single contributors early on was directed at specific interactions, such as conflict management and feeling unheard among peers. Now her focus is more on reassuring her people that they are on the right track.
“As I’ve gotten older, before I answer, I ask more questions to figure out the real question,” she said. “Quite often, it’s not the question on the surface. It’s something much deeper.”
Career Advice
Bolumole asked what advice Gentry-Stuenkel would have for early-career professionals who want to show they are ready for leadership. While many students want to start in corporate strategy, Gentry-Stuenkel recommends going into operations, as she did, where they will make decisions, solve problems and learn the business from the ground up.
Gentry-Stuenkel acknowledged she knew nothing about manufacturing when she started with General Motors in operations as a line supervisor at age 18. She made many mistakes, but those taught her to embrace daunting circumstances. In her experience, high-level management pays attention to formidable situations and managing them well gets noticed.
“Through my career, I raised my hand to go to the ugly assignment,” she says. “When a particular position opened up, the CEO chose me, not because I’m any smarter than other people who could have done this job. He knew I get things done and could lead through a crisis.”
Geopolitical Volatility
Next, the discussion moved to Caterpillar’s handling of geopolitical risk and volatility in its upstream supply chain. While Gentry-Stuenkel said tariffs are creating uncertainty, impairing Caterpillar’s agility in planning investments, her main concern is for their customers spread across 200 countries. Tariffs, embargoes and wars are complicating supporting them, but the company can lean on its agility. For example, Caterpillar is flying replacement parts into the Middle East to keep customers’ equipment running.
“The challenge to the team is, ‘How fast can you react?’” she explains. “How do we maintain exceptional communication with the dealers so they know we’re fighting for them?”
Self-Management and Problem-Solving
On the topics of managing stress, staying motivated and maintaining momentum, Gentry-Stuenkel said that she mastered compartmentalizing early on, then complemented that with being intentional in how she spends her time. When she senses her team members are struggling with stress, she reminds them their work is important but not the end-all of existence.
“At this point in my career, I have more than 30 years of stories, so whatever is bad, usually I had something that was worse and got through that all right,” Gentry-Stuenkel said.
That recollection sparked Gentry-Stuenkel to assess solving problems as a form of stress relief, saying, “The excitement when you solve a problem you thought was unsolvable is like a rush.”
She recalled when a supplier needed parts immediately to keep operating – parts her company did not have on hand. With millions of dollars at stake, making the needed part would have required taking down a plant and redoing the line. Her executives asked her if she were sure it would work, expecting to hear a “yes.”
“I said, ‘No, but it’s the best chance we have, so we are going for it,’” she recalls. “And what’s amazing to me is how going through those tough experiences builds relationships that I treasure.”
Imparting Leadership
Bolumole termed that experience as an example of transformational leadership and asked Gentry-Stuenkel how she uses these heads-on-fire moments to instill leadership into her team.
Gentry-Stuenkel said she has led teams that were wavering between no good options. She would tell them to write down their least-bad options, and they would choose among them. Then, as leader, she would take responsibility for the outcome.
“Lack of a decision is probably the worst thing that we can do,” she said. “So, we’re going to decide, and I’ll put my name on the decision.”
Customer Service
Bolumole turned to Caterpillar’s promise of, essentially, everlasting service to its customers and asked, “If there is a 100-year-old product needing service, how does that happen?”
Gentry-Stuenkel noted that Caterpillar employs engineers who reverse-engineer items, plus it has remanufacturing operations that can resurrect parts and suppliers that can custom-make parts based on old drawings. Its distribution centers also store old parts that aren’t often needed, which inhibits inventory turnover, but they usually opt to keep the old parts available.
“A customer called a couple of weeks ago with an 86-year-old tractor they need a part for, and we said, ‘We don’t have it; it’s going to be a couple of months,’” she said. “They were so happy to find somebody that could service it that they were okay with the delay.”
Student Advice
Shifting the focus to students, Gentry-Stuenkel’s advised them to be proactive, be inquisitive and work to find solutions to problems, and if they find one, bring it forward. She also said students should use old-school approaches for urgent matters.
“If you want to stand out amongst your peers, get comfortable picking up a telephone, because it makes all the difference in getting results,” she says.
The Glass Ceiling in Supply Chain
Bolumole’s last question was, “The glass ceiling: How does one identify that it is inherently present and what to do about it?”
“Through most of my career in automotive and heavy construction, women are about 10 percent of the workforce,” Gentry-Stuenkel said. “Saying that from the standpoint of being very much in the minority, it is something that can be overcome. It’s okay to recognize it, but don’t let that hold you back. If you get too obsessed with it, it’s going to hold you back.”
She added that when she earned her last automotive promotion, she received a gift from her “curmudgeonly” late father-in-law. After the promotion, she saw him in the driveway smashing a piece of glass with a hammer. He then put the glass shards in a saltshaker that he presented to her.
“He said, ‘You shook ’em up, girl, you broke the glass ceiling. I’m so proud of you.’”
Gentry-Stuenkel concluded the session by saying, “I’m just a girl from Indiana, no smarter or more special than anybody else, but if I can do it, so can any of you.”
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CONTACT:
Scott McNutt, senior business writer/publicist, rmcnutt4@utk.edu
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