Archive: Mar 2015

Bill Ansley

Five Customs Compliance Tips for Aerospace Companies

Aerospace manufacturers and distributors who move shipments across international borders face an often-complicated, high-stakes process as they navigate export rules and local customs regulations. Fines for non-compliance can amount to millions of dollars. That makes understanding guidelines a vital business priority. For some companies, the hassles associated with customs can dissuade them from expanding into […]

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Michelle Coleman

Best Practices for Preventing Pallet Rack Damage

Warehouses and distribution centers can be hectic, and it is essential to have solid damage prevention practices in effect to prevent employee injury and minimize loss. However, in an environment where workers are maneuvering heavy equipment and heavy loads in confined spaces, accidents are bound to happen. Even the best driver occasionally has a collision, […]

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Greg Cronin

Is Your Warehouse Software Holding You Back?

Change is underway in warehouse management and fulfillment operations. Driven by e-commerce and omni-channel demand, and enabled by innovative automation and software solutions, the fulfillment execution model is ushering in an era of real-time adaptive workflow for optimized fulfillment. When warehouse management systems (WMS) replaced paper-based systems in the mid-1980s, they marked a fundamental shift […]

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John Sell

How Omni-Channel Commerce Is Changing Traditional Supply Chains

With the introduction of online (e) and mobile (m) commerce, consumers are now more comfortable than ever making purchases from any place, at any time, on virtually any device. This shift in consumer behavior has changed how goods and products flow through the supply chain to the end user. As a result, supply chain partners […]

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Bob Richard

USPS Publishes a Battery of New Shipping Regulations

Q: The United States Postal Service (USPS) published changes for shipping lithium batteries. How will that affect my shipments? A: On Jan. 26, 2015, the USPS published revisions to the domestic mail regulations that more closely align USPS requirements for shipping lithium batteries with those found in both the U.S. DOT and international regulations. The […]

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Joseph Hoban

The Value of a Freight Forwarder

Q: How do you define a freight forwarder? A: A freight forwarder is a full-service provider offering multiple levels of transportation and logistics services. It combines the assets of airlines, steamship lines, and trucking companies around the world to build remarkable service and price solutions for a variety of clients—even for individual customers or shipments. […]

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Doug Pasquale

Unlocking the Hidden Green Value in Mobile Devices

Reverse logistics for mobile devices is more important than ever. Mobile-connected devices exceeded the world’s population in 2014. Wearable technology sales will hit 22 million in 2015, and reach 370 million devices over the next five years, according to analyst CCS Insight. Imagine landfills piled high with smartwatches and connected egg trays, instead of smartphones […]

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Charlie Saffro

Preparing Your Company Today to Hire for Tomorrow

The logistics sector will create more than one million jobs through 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. To complicate matters, there is a skills gap in logistics, so recruiting proven and experienced professionals has become a priority for many companies. With competition for talent increasing, organizations must attract candidates who will be the […]

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David Bouchard

What is Globalization Doing to the World of Logistics?

Since the early 1990s, global trade agreements have divided the world up into larger and larger chunks of trading blocks where goods can flow virtually unimpeded across national borders that once protected their precious industries from outside competition with tariffs, duties and penalties. The Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico was signed […]

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Global Logistics—March 2015

Global Logistics—March 2015

Hong Kong: A Space Odyssey Hong Kong is one of the world’s most densely populated cities. Remarkably, only 30 percent of its land is actually developed—a reflection of the area’s mountainous terrain. Hong Kong historically has focused much of its infrastructure development on costly projects to reclaim land from the sea. Accordingly, these constraints have […]

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Trends—March 2015

Trends—March 2015

Learning the ABCs of DCs To be competitive in today’s dynamic retail space, online companies need to rethink distribution networks that were built to serve the brick-and-mortar store model, suggests research conducted by supply chain faculty at the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Haslam College of Business. Supply chain faculty surveyed more than 200 companies, and […]

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Jim Young: Sourcing for a Startup

Jim Young: Sourcing for a Startup

Jim Young is senior supply chain manager at Applied Microstructures, Inc. in San Jose, Calif. He has held this position since 2011. Responsibilities: All supply chain activities required to support product development, configuration, and production, as well as shipment of products to customers. Experience: Variety of positions in materials and manufacturing support; materials planning and […]

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Supporting a Multilingual Workforce

As today’s workforce becomes increasingly multilingual and diverse, employers are focusing on ways to effectively communicate with their staff. Open lines of communication are key to avoiding confusion, mistakes, and accidents. While it is not necessary for managers to be fluent in every language the staff speaks, it is important to take steps to make […]

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Felecia Stratton

A Supply Chain World Tour

Demand-driven logistics spans the world…in practice and in print. For a host of reasons, U.S. shippers and consignees are taking control of how they pull—and push—global product to market. Shifting demand dynamics, geopolitical volatility, currency fluctuations, government interference, lengthening and deepening supply networks, and cost reduction directives have conflated to consternate even the best supply […]

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