First, the cost of planning has fallen off a cliff. Running a complex plant well used to be almost impossible — it took rare people, years of instinct, and a great deal of educated guessing. Now a machine does it better, in seconds, for almost nothing. The hard, rare skill became cheap and ordinary.
Second, a new baseline has arrived. A plant can now run the way only the best planners ever dreamed: re-planning itself the instant anything changes, staying efficient in real time, and knowing — live — what every scarce thing is truly worth and how a change in one place ripples through the rest. This exists today. And because it exists, it stops being an advantage and becomes the table stakes — the price of being in the game, not a way to win it.
Third, and this is the part that matters: once the plant plans itself, planning is no longer where you win or lose. For thirty years it was the bottleneck every plant strained against. That bottleneck is going away. So the contest moves to the harder questions a perfect plan can’t answer — what to build, what to promise, what you’re actually trying to become. That is where the game goes now, and that is where your sharpest people belong.
So don’t spend the next five years, and the next fortune, getting good at planning. That race is ending. Get good at what comes after it.