4 Ways to Ensure Your Valuable Shipments Arrive Safely
Every shipment contains something of value to the sender and receiver. That package may have an extraordinarily high monetary value with little emotional equity, or incredibly high emotional value for the recipient but little financial worth. For example, let’s take a shipment containing temperature- or time-sensitive pharmaceuticals for patients in a new drug trial. The […]
Read More
You Say You Want a Co-Evolution?
In human evolution, scientists theorize that primitive man existed 3.8 million years ago. Progress was slow until 200,000 years ago, when modern man made his appearance. Then came a spark of progress: animal domestication, farming, global expansion, refined toolmaking, and more. What we today call the third-party logistics (3PL) sector followed that same evolutionary process. […]
Read More
Turning Back the Pages: 20 Years of Top 100 3PLs
Where were you in 1996? Working your way up the transportation ladder? Starting a career in the logistics field? On the outside looking in? Still in high school? Grade school? Every once in a while it’s fun to throw it back—to an earlier time and reflect on where we come from, where we’ve been, cause […]
Read MoreOvercoming LTL Shipping Challenges
Less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation involves moving shipments that won’t fill a 48- or 53-foot semi-trailer. LTL could be half of a full shipment, a single pallet, or a single box. LTL shipping creates many challenges, and understanding how to overcome them is key to efficiency. Adam Robinson, marketing manager of third-party logistics (3PL) provider Cerasis Inc., […]
Read More
Terri Anderson: Care and Feeding of the WMS
Terri Anderson is production warehouse management systems manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a global learning company specializing in Pre-K to 12th grade content, services, and technology. She has held this position, based in Indianapolis, since 2004. Responsibilities: Configure, enhance, and test the company’s warehouse management system (WMS); liaison between distribution centers and the technology group; […]
Read More
Trends—July 2015
ShippingPass vs. Prime: The Fight for Last-Mile Rights Walmart and Amazon are a study in contrasts, from corporate culture to omni-channel strategy. One promises everyday low prices; the other prioritizes selection and speed. But all things being different, they are chasing the same thing—customer satisfaction. Both retail leaders have found a common battleground when it […]
Read More
Global Logistics—July 2015
TPP: Fishing for Accountability Buried within the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are provisions that will help protect global fisheries—and consumers—from widespread fraud in the seafood supply chain. It’s a pet project of the Obama Administration, which specifically created the Presidential Task Force on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Seafood Fraud in June 2014 […]
Read More
Working With the Right Enterprise Logistics Provider Makes Good Companies Significantly Better
In any economy, the key for manufacturers, distributors or retailers is competitive advantage. When companies lack competitive advantage—or worse yet, experience competitive disadvantage—a difficult economic environment amplifies the pain. Principal reasons many good companies have struggled with this issue are limited exposure to best practices, technology, tools, training and internal resource capacity. Companies are increasingly […]
Read More
Cloud Inspections: Improving Productivity, Safety, and Reducing Costs
How important are inspections to your business? Does your business need to track the condition of materials moving through a process to avoid disputes over who might have damaged what? Do you have a private fleet that requires vehicle inspections? Or do you need to inspect finished products, either at the factory, or when they […]
Read More
What “Digital Business” Means for your Business
Q: You recently attended your 11th Gartner Supply Chain Executive Summit. This year the key theme was Digital Business, a core ingredient for supply chain transformation success. What is Digital Business? A: Digital Business is a concept that encompasses the people, processes, and enabling technologies of the supply chain of the future. It all starts […]
Read More
Demurrage and Detention Charges: Are They Equitable?
Q: Given recent port congestion, stoppages, and increasing vessel sizes, what impact does that have on the equitable assessment of demurrage and detention charges? A: It is the responsibility of the carriers and the ports to make cargo available to the shipper before there should be any consideration of beginning the free time clock and […]
Read More
6 Global Supply Chain Challenges To Ignore at Your Own Risk
Along with the many benefits that come from sourcing outside the United States, such as low-cost manufacturing, several issues must be properly managed to ensure a successful supply chain. Finding a rock-bottom price in China or India is not the problem, but landing great costs while avoiding distance, timing, quality, and language problems can be […]
Read More
3PLs Can Deliver Big Benefits to Small Companies
No group has benefitted more from the explosion of e-commerce than small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). Still, the perception is often that SMBs deal only in personal, face-to-face interactions between customers and business owners in a brick-and-mortar store. While that personal touch is still very much alive, e-commerce has fundamentally changed and expanded the number […]
Read More
The Human Touch: New Ergonomic Initiatives Sustain Employee Efficiency
Today’s global supply chains must support constant market changes while also sustaining productivity. In order to achieve this, supply chain leaders are executing several strategies, including implementing ergonomic initiatives that minimize risks for production employees on the job. In production environments, ergonomics plays a direct role in employee performance, which translates into production sustainability. Ergonomics […]
Read More
Rise of the Machines: How Self-Driving Trucks Will Alter the Supply Chain
If you drive through Nevada on your family vacation this summer, you may glimpse what many believe is the future of trucking in this country. Daimler’s Freightliner division unveiled its first self-driving truck licensed for commercial use in Nevada, one of the first states to permit autonomous passenger vehicles and the only one to license […]
Read More
Supply Chain + Marketing = Successful Consumer Promotions
More consumer-facing companies are using promotions as a way to attract and retain customers, try new product concepts, and meet consumer demand.Examples include limited-time food offerings in restaurants, holiday-inspired product colors, and co-branded promotions at big box retailers and grocers. These promotions give marketers, product developers, and salespeople an additional avenue to express creativity and […]
Read MoreWhy Ports Need a Master Plan
Ports constitute an important economic hub and critical economic engines, bringing varying degrees of benefit to the international, regional, and local economies in which they operate. In a sense, ports are much like living organisms. In biology, organisms are defined as contiguous living systems, which, in at least some form, are capable of response to […]
Read More
What Customers Expect in the E-Commerce Age
Twenty years ago, selling and delivering retail goods to consumers was a relatively simple process. Nearly all purchases were made in stores, so if a retailer adequately stocked its shelves with desirable, dependable goods, shoppers were usually satisfied. If they weren’t, they often had limited options, depending on how far they had to travel to […]
Read More
Inventory Replenishment: Why Push When You Can Pull?
Today‘s supply chains are undergoing significant pressures to become more demand-driven. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers must choose the approach they hope will make the most profit. Should you produce goods according to demand forecasts, or by reacting to what consumers already bought? Companies are investing in a new generation of cloud technologies that enable the […]
Read More