FourKites celebrates innovation with 2025 Golden Kite Awards

FourKites recently revealed the latest recipients of its annual customer awards, which celebrate organizations and individuals who are achieving breakthrough business outcomes through supply chain innovation and automation. The program recognizes companies that have transformed their operations from reactive management to proactive orchestration, delivering measurable impact on customer experience, operational efficiency and bottom-line results.

The Golden Kite Awards honor companies achieving exceptional strategic outcomes across five categories: Supply Chain Excellence (Domestic), Supply Chain Excellence (International Freight Management), Connected Supply Chain, End-to-End Optimization and Supply Chain Visionary.

The winners were announced during FourKites’ 2025 Summit at the Swissôtel in Chicago.

“These organizations exemplify how leveraging AI and automation can build resilient operations and deliver measurable business impact,” Priya Rajagopalan, FourKites president of product, technology, and operations, said in a news release. “What’s remarkable is seeing companies move beyond basic logistics optimization to reshape how their entire supply chains create value for the business.

“The shift to autonomous orchestration is already happening, and these winners prove it’s delivering real results.”

Ardent Mills received the Golden Kite Award for Supply Chain Excellence (Domestic) for orchestrating a cultural and operational transformation that turned initial platform resistance into enterprise-wide adoption. Through comprehensive change management and strategic alignment across transportation and logistics, customer service, mill schedulers and sales functions, Ardent Mills achieved dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, FourKites reported.

Barilla Group received the Golden Kite Award for Supply Chain Excellence (International Freight Management) for transforming a manual, fragmented tracking process into an integrated global visibility platform. Managing over 2,000 weekly shipments across 120-plus countries, Barilla eliminated countless hours of manual carrier communications while building resilience against major disruptions, including the Red Sea shipping crisis and Panama Canal drought through predictive analytics and proactive management.

Kimberly-Clark received the Golden Kite Award for Connected Supply Chain for reimagining facility operations through intelligent automation. By implementing autonomous gate technology and eliminating manual touchpoints, Kimberly-Clark transformed a process that took 8-10 minutes into a sub-2-minute automated workflow, demonstrating how strategic technology deployment can drive immediate operational value while positioning the organization for future autonomous capabilities.

Trane Technologies received the Golden Kite Award for End-to-End Optimization for transforming a $2.69 million detention-cost problem into a strategic operational excellence initiative.

“FourKites’ yard analytics and performance dashboards helped us eliminate almost all of our annual detention at two sites, reducing costs by 98.6%,” said Trey Hendricks, Trane director of international logistics operations. “We implemented proactive monitoring with weekly operational reviews, and we’ve applied these strategies across additional sites.”

The Coca-Cola Company received the Golden Kite Award for Supply Chain Visionary for pioneering autonomous customer service capabilities that deliver transformational business value.

“FourKites’ AI agent, Tracy, has transformed how we handle ‘where’s my truck’ queries, cutting response times from 90 minutes to just a few seconds, returning hundreds of hours to our associates,” said Patrick McManus, Coca-Cola senior director of customer operations. “Beyond customer service, Tracy now handles specific tasks, including identifying stale location data, flagging missing information, and proactively nudging carriers to provide updates.

“This positions us ahead of the curve as we prepare for a future where customers expect increased and differentiated service capabilities.”

The High Flyer Awards recognize individual champions who are driving supply chain transformation within their organizations. As engaged participants in FourKites’ online community, these leaders influence product development, share best practices, and advocate for continuous innovation. This year’s recipients are: Shwetha Balagali, Unilever; Dave Stawowczyk, Armada; Jeff Covington, Smithfield Foods; Carrie Conrad, Land O’ Lakes; Lola Gutierrez, Direct Roots; Amber McMillian, Bridgestone Americas; Cristie Ighani, Trane; and Kim Scalzott, Armada.