Trimming Your Transportation Spend
Transportation costs run high, but cutting your spend might be more feasible than you think.
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Resilient…Responsive…Determined: Rails Focus on the Future
Despite economic headwinds, rails are investing heavily for future growth. Inbound Logistics gets the full story at the annual RailTrends conference.
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A Reader Profile Reunion: Where Are They Now?
Inbound Logistics gets back in touch with former Reader Profile subjects who have since moved on to new challenges. All of them are most likely to succeed.
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Logistics Leadership: Secrets to Success
Ready to elevate your logistics career to the next level? Here are the skills and knowledge you need to take you to the top.
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Transportation Advocacy: Shippers Stand Up for Their Rights
Dissatisfied with transportation policy coming out of Washington? Waiting for our national logistics strategy? With so much at stake, standing on the sidelines is not an option. Now’s the time to get involved to drive real change.
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U.S.—Mexico Trade: Two-Way Traffic
Integrated third-party logistics solutions, expanded and improved intermodal service offerings, and creative collaborations to optimize transport resources are making cross-border shipping easier than ever.
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Comfort Zone: A Better, Faster FTZ
The Alternative Site Framework designation is changing the Foreign Trade Zone landscape, allowing shippers a more expedient process for streamlining the supply chain.
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Training Tomorrow’s Logistics and Transportation Executives Today
A volcanic cloud descends on Europe, disrupting flight plans. A tsunami in Thailand ripples across the Pacific and affects port activity in California. Forest fires in Los Angeles close highways for days. Threats of a terrorist attack in Brussels halt all transportation. Today’s logistics and transportation executives must be prepared to handle these scenarios. Their […]
Read MoreImproving Supplier Compliance
Developing an effective supplier compliance program requires a well-defined plan. To achieve success quickly, it is crucial to initiate the plan with the right suppliers. Peter Wharton, IBM’s team lead for commercial product marketing, offers this advice for ensuring supplier compliance. 1. Define a successful supplier compliance strategy. Clearly define the stakes and risks, and […]
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William Gregory: Into Africa
William Gregory has served as global supply chain coordinator at VT iDirect, in Herndon, Va., since 2012. VT iDirect is a global vendor of technology for satellite-based Internet Protocol (IP) communications. Responsibilities: International shipping, customs, and regulatory compliance; liaison with freight forwarders; subject matter expert for Middle East and Africa. Experience: Intern, Samuel Shapiro and […]
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Connectivity-Visibility-Optimization: Three Keys To a Successful Supply Chain Trading Partner Network
2013 has been called the Year of the Network by numerous supply chain and transportation industry thought leaders. A well-oiled trading partner network allows one-to-many and many-to-many partners to collaborate and communicate using a single source of truth garnered from real-time information. Harnessing this collective power provides a competitive advantage as well as the flexibility […]
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The Lean Supply Chain: A Field of Opportunity
Businesses all around the world are familiar with the value of lean principles. The current conditions of globalization and competitive environments require operating a lean business now more than ever. Lean principles teach to eliminate waste and focus only on those things that result in customer value—ultimately building business cultures that focus on problem solving. […]
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Outsourcing for Newbies, and a Refresher for All
While Fortune 500 companies routinely outsource everything from distribution centers and transportation management to packaging, freight audit/payment and other functions, your up-and-coming company may only need to outsource a single function of its operations, perhaps a combination. It’s rarely an easy decision process, but the objective is always clear. Growing companies need access to better […]
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Using Strategic Acquisitions to Satisfy Your Customer Base
Global shippers continue to face supply chain challenges that seem to change more often and more dramatically than ever before. They require logistics partners who can react to these changes and help them navigate the complexities of global trade. Shippers want 3PL partners that not only responsively evolve service networks and capabilities to flex with […]
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Trends—January 2013
It’s a Smaller World After All The shrinking distance between demand and supply is triggering a trend toward inter-regional supply chains and creating a globalization tipping point, according to research by Philadelphia-based third-party logistics provider BDP International, its Centrix consulting unit, and Temple University’s Fox School of Business. Real-time communication technology has greatly increased global […]
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Global Logistics—January 2013
Tesco Tests Longer Reefer Trailers As part of a government-backed trial program testing the efficacy of longer trailers, United Kingdom-based grocery chain Tesco has taken delivery of 25 new 51-foot Gray & Adams refrigerated units. The company will use the new trailers to deliver store inventory from regional distribution centers. Each trailer can carry 51 […]
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Surveying the Home Delivery Landscape
Shortly after Claude Ryan and Jim Casey began delivering telegram messages in 1907, they seized on the idea to solve a business problem between department stores and the growing urban population in Seattle: managing home delivery of store-bought products. These new urbanites mostly walked or used streetcars, with only a few owning early automobiles. Safely […]
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Five Signs Your Production Logistics Needs Help
Most manufacturers experience and address common inbound logistics challenges, but one area of improvement that many overlook is the discipline of production logistics — ensuring each machine and workstation is fed with the right product in the right quantity and quality at the right time. As the crucial link that connects inbound materials to on-time […]
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Yard and Dock Management Tools: An Extra Set of Eyes in Your Facility
Facility managers and warehouse executives face unique challenges as global supply chain complexity grows. While many issues and costs associated with moving materials and products are out of their control, optimizing yard, dock, and warehouse processes can increase operational and logistics efficiency. Designed to eliminate common and costly logistics problems, yard and dock management systems […]
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Supply Chain Force Multipliers
For years, I’ve wanted the Logistics Planner issue theme to focus on the concept of using inbound logistics as a force multiplier. When I entered the conference room for the Planner issue strategy meeting this year, I was ready to make my case. But when I presented my idea to the editorial team, I was […]
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