Change Is Good Medicine For Kohl & Frisch
Kohl & Frisch transforms its distribution center with advanced technology and new processes—all while experiencing double-digit growth.
Warehousing: The Evolution Continues
As the evolution of warehousing continues, logistics professionals will have plenty of opportunity to show just what kind of contribution they can make.
Material Handling Technology: Beyond the Nuts and Bolts
Today’s material handling technology is a lot more than nuts and bolts. By enabling companies to handle products more swiftly, material handling gives companies the ability to meet increasing customer requirements, boost productivity, and cut costs. Here’s a look at the technological tools that are available today, and how companies are using them in their distribution centers.
Andy Gustafson: Logistics for the Rich and Famous
To keep the rich and famous cruising in style, someone has to overhaul the engines, install the saunas, and replace the teak railings on the world’s largest yachts. Andy Gustafson’s job is to make sure the technicians who repair and refit these luxury vessels have the materials they need—whether that means sandblasting sand, electronic equipment, […]
The 411 on Product Lifecycle Management
The age we live in may very well be be remembered as the “Age of Acronyms.” The logistics industry has certainly contributed its fair share. Among the many new SCAs (Supply Chain Acronyms) to make their way into our daily lexicon is an upstart called Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Like supply chain management (SCM), PLM […]
V3 Systems: Scaling Supply Chain Peaks
Seeking a WMS system to help manage expected growth, Mountain Hardwear found a solution tailored to its size and needs.
Choosing a Warehouse Management System
Purchasing a new Warehouse Management System (WMS) for your company is a little more complicated than simply interviewing a group of companies and picking the most newfangled or expensive product on the market. You have to know what drives your company and be able to weed through all the bells and whistles to target your […]
RFID Use Limited Only by Imagination
Logistics professionals have long viewed radio frequency identification (RFID) as a technology of the future. By fixing their vision on the distant horizon, however, they may be overlooking the real value that RFID can deliver today. RFID technology is already used thousands of times each day in port, distribution center, and fleet operations around the […]
Vendor Compliance: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
You just landed your first big customer. No more selling to mom-and-pops. You alert your suppliers and increase your raw materials inventory. You step up production and increase your finished goods inventory, anxiously awaiting the purchase order. Then suddenly it hits you: in order to get the purchase order you have to comply with a […]
The Power of GC3
DuPont’s TransOval web portal is primed to take globalization to a whole new sphere, with help from G-Log’s GC3.
Stirring the Pot
I love making chili and am always amazed at that point in the pot where individual ingredients coalesce into something new and wonderful. While cooking up this issue, we saw the beginnings of a similar trend in logistics IT. Business IT solutions running down functional silos to the heart of an enterprise—purchasing/SCM, TMS, WMS—are now […]
Optimizing Your Supply Chain: A Model Approach
A wide array of technological tools are just the do-it-yourself kit companies can use to model, then optimize, their supply chains.
Wireless Supply Chains: No Strings Attached
On the road, in the warehouse or the office, today’s wireless technologies help streamline supply chain operations.
Carol Carrieri: Life-Support Logistics
Carol Carrieri had a warehouse full of medical supplies. The problem was how to get them into Manhattan. Minutes after she and her staff at McKesson Medical-Surgical’s distribution center in Dayton, N.J., learned of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, they started calling customers in New York to find out what they […]
Enterasys: Stock Options
By adjusting inventory levels automatically every day, Enterasys streamlines its service parts depots.
Consolidating Reverse Logistics and Warehousing Yields Greater Returns
While 3PLs have been tuned in to the retail industry’s returns management dilemma, manufacturers are also struggling with similar problems. In addition to traditional consumer returns, manufacturers are also charged with managing overstocks, seasonality, stockouts, shelf damage, obsolescence, and sales trends. As a result, it’s crucial to get valuable inventory assets returned back through the […]
Selecting a Transportation Management System
To help you select a transportation management system, here are 10 tips from Kevin Lynch, CEO of Minneapolis-based Nistevo, which provides a collaborative logistics network for transportation management: 1. Insource or outsource? Streamlined transportation management can be achieved through purchasing TMS technology or selecting a 3PL with TMS capabilities. Your level of internal expertise and […]
Technology Is Not a Cure-All
It isn’t always about technology. That sounds a bit heretical to modern ears. Technology has done so much to alter our world, make our lives easier, and provide answers to decades-old business problems. We have come to depend so heavily on the value of technology that our first response to most business problems is investing […]
All Across the Angry Seas
We’ve heard for the last two decades that the world is getting smaller. Not anymore. Distances across angry seas are greater than those across peaceful seas. Cultural differences, political differences, and security concerns have raised formidable impediments to the trade and tranquility that bind the world together. And so we struggle to secure our homeland. […]
Genesco: From the Flintstones to the Jetsons
Genesco’s new paperless, wireless warehouse has doubled output, with a 99.6-percent accuracy rate on shipments.
Global Logistics: Bridging the Cultural Divide
Companies move to ensure operational excellence when working across the cultural divide.
New Product Launches: The Cache to Cash Cycle
Aligning marketing, advertising, and sales initiatives with logistics and fulfillment processes to ensure that new products make their way onto store shelves and into shopping carts demands a collaborative and integrated approach among internal departments and supply chain partners.
Lewis Dibert: Spinning Red Into Gold
Despite an affable disposition, Lewis Dibert spends his days seeing red. As director of logistics for Red Gold Inc., each day from July through October he moves hundreds of truckloads of tomatoes from fields in five states to be packed into cans at three Indiana production plants. The rest of the year, he brings in […]
Lorantec: Cargo Gets Smart
In this era of smart machines, smart cards, smart motors, and smart sensors, it’s about time we had smart cargo—specifically, smart cargo containers. The ability to know where and in what condition a shipment is becomes a major supply chain consideration and the primary goal of better process visibility. Lorantec of Sunnyvale, Calif., is building […]
Amphire: Platform for Productivity
Food service distributor MBM Corp. finds a base for building tighter relationships with vendors and offering value-added services to customers.
Shifting Gears from Inventory to Motor Freight Costs
The nation’s motor carrier freight bill for 2001 was $494 billion—more than 50 percent of total U.S. business logistics costs ($970 billion) and 82 percent of total U.S. business transportation costs ($605 billion), according to Robert Delaney’s annual State of Logistics Report released in June 2002. The implication for the nation’s shippers and receivers is […]
Working With Transportation Salespeople
Working with transportation salespeople can be a pleasant or frustrating experience. You have to separate the person who wants to sell you something from the professional who wants to provide the appropriate solution that will meet your needs. To help you get the most bang for your buck and establish a relationship that leaves you […]
CRM and the Danger of Dirty Data
Time doesn’t stand still. Neither do your customers. Face it. We are a nation on the move, and rapidly growing as well. In 2000, businesses filed 2.6 million change-of-address orders. There are a mind-boggling 140 million deliverable addresses in the United States, and the number is growing by nearly two million annually. If you are […]
Packaging Automation Delivers What Customers Demand
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment,” writes author Warren G. Bennis. Well, not quite. But automation is certainly the watchword as today’s manufacturers face […]
Silo’s Legacy
In last month’s Reader Profile, Brittain Ladd offers some great advice to people starting out in logistics: “Educate yourself. The best logistics managers are those individuals who are great communicators and who understand the importance of mastering the supply chain, as well as mastering relationships with customers and suppliers.” Besides repeating, that sentiment bears expanding. […]
What Makes a Logistics Leader?
Great leaders relish and seek responsibility and accountability. They inspire confidence, win the hearts and minds of their team, and bring out their best, whether on the warehouse floor or in the executive wing. The strategies and advice in this article can help get you on the leadership track.
SCM & Logistics: What’s the Difference
Are logistics and supply chain management the same thing? How are they alike? How do they differ? IL readers weigh in with their opinion, and Dr. Edward J. Marien tries to make sense of it all.
Alex Reizinger: Stretching His Wings
When Sandy Reizinger first went to work for Ryder Supply Chain Solutions three years ago, he had barely a moment to breathe. Reizinger was part of a team managing transportation for Nortel Networks at its “systems house”—a final assembly and distribution center in Montreal. As logistics coordinator, he built 10 to 12 daily trailer loads, […]
EIS: Practice Makes Perfect
Based in Downers Grove, Ill., Enterprise Information Solutions Inc. (EIS) is devoted to systems integration and open systems, open source computer engineering. The company’ s transportation practice focuses on transportation and logistics solutions. Marc Mitchell, one of EIS’ s founders, holds the intriguing title of Transportation Practice Director. “When we founded EIS, we decided to […]
Xporta: The Total Cost of Global Sourcing
Ingersoll-Rand scopes out the full cost of sourcing from different overseas suppliers.
Contingency Planning: Get Ahead of the Game NOW
It comes with the territory. Those of us who make our living in the fiercely competitive world of transportation, logistics, and supply chain management have developed an intense focus on consistently meeting and exceeding customer needs. Although most of us already operate under the credo “we need to do our work better tomorrow than we […]
Maximizing Your CRM System
Two-thirds of all Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives fail, according to a recent study by Gartner Inc. Proper implementation and direction may be one problem. But many businesses overlook the fact that the CRM information they store and manage is inaccurate, outdated, or redundant. Here are 10 tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of […]
Balancing IT Strategy with ROI
For years enterprise software implementations were all about the Big Bang. After spending months and millions of dollars installing a new system, the grand moment would come, the “on” switch would be thrown, and the organization would suddenly achieve Nirvana. Times have changed. In a chilly economy, IT executives cannot afford to wait very long […]
Cycle Time Reduction Gives Life to Productivity
Manufacturers that can’t deliver on time won’t keep their customers happy—or keep them at all. This reality is all the more reason why small and mid-sized manufacturers need to get their products into customers’ hands as quickly as possible. Often, however, bottlenecks in the production process make this impossible. The following scenarios of lost productivity […]
Integration Tool Gets Railroad on the Right Track
To better manage and share information among business partners and customers, Freightliner makes tracks to a web-based collaborative and integrated IT network.
Feeling Full: More is More
When choosing the mix of articles, and setting their length, for our annual Logistics Planner issue, I have more freedom than usual. As an editor, I normally face tremendous pressure to keep things brief in recognition of, or perhaps in surrender to, today’s quick reading habits. Each issue, I struggle with a brevity bias, as […]
Descartes Was Wrong … and Right
Descartes divided our world into two distinct parts—”extended things,” things that are real, existing in the physical world and “thinking things,” thoughts and memories. Descartes was wrong. That’s what New York scientist Timothy Tully says and he is out to prove it. How? By using molecular biology to break down thoughts into physical components. He […]
The Proof is in the Picking
Wholesaler rolls out voice-directed order selection in DC after successful pilot.
Managing Logistics Change: Doing it Right
Wrapped in a chrysalis of change, business logistics managers are rebuilding internal elements and morphing legacy systems to answer increased customer demands and manage never-ending variables. What emerges is a logistics process that is more agile, able to fly faster and go farther. See how leading companies use change to transorm themselves, with breathtaking results.
Zero Hour
What happens when disaster strikes and your shipment never makes it? Time stops for a brief moment … then the clock starts ticking and the phones start ringing. What do you do? How should your vendors and carriers respond? Read this gripping fictional account of one carrier dealing with the unexpected. The story may be make-believe, but the consequences are no less real.
Choreographing the New Supply Chain
Connecting customers, distributors, manufacturers and suppliers to allow real-time workflow requires they all dance to the same music.
Delivering the Goods: The Art of Managing Your Supply Chain
Master the recipe and you achieve efficiencies and savings. Becoming a better global competitor is just the icing on the cake.
Slow-Moving Inventory: All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go
Some companies that think they do a good job speeding inventory have it only half right. Many focus only on fast-moving items, ignoring the savings potential of managing slow-movers. Here’s how to tap this new opportunity.
This Just Out: The Latest in Logistics I.T.
Heavy freight, “lite” logistics and global customs clearance procedures drive three new supply chain applications.
Logistics I.T.—5×5
Five solutions providers answer five questions about new logistics IT buying trends.
Air Cargo: Business As Usual
Unfazed. Surviving a tumultuous two-year stretch marked by security and regulatory demands, rising shipper expectations, and internal profitability pressures, air carriers show resolve and resiliency. Here’s a look at how airlines, forwarders, and integrators prove that, despite the challenges, it’s just business as usual.
Brittain Ladd: Doing It Right The First Time, Every Time
Success to me,” says Brittain Ladd, “is educating others on the importance of quality and doing the job right the first time, every time.” As a Six Sigma black belt, Ladd has dedicated himself to eliminating variance—making sure his organization adheres to the highest standards in every detail. Ladd is transportation planning manager for Michaels […]
Where the Supply Chain Meets the Value Chain
By taking a different approach to the way we look at certain objects and processes, we gain the benefit of objectivity. A similar method holds true when looking at the supply chain. It is the nature of systems, especially complex ones such as in the supply chain, to evolve and change. Part of the pressure […]
Unilever HPC: From Nine Little Boxes to One Lean Machine
Web-based RFI, RFP and powerful analytic tools help Unilever HPC revamp its transport strategy.
Building Bridges With Your 3PLs
With competition at an all-time high, it is more important than ever to develop a trusting relationship with your logistics partners. As the logistics business grows, 3PLs offer services that encompass the entire supply chain. They no longer just manage your warehouse—today they offer global solutions that include transportation, warehousing, customs, and IT services. Because […]
Selecting Core Carriers
Choosing core carriers can be a daunting task, especially with so many carriers out there wooing your business. Here are 10 tips to help you keep a clear head when carriers come courting with all their bells and whistles, from Bob Belshaw, vice president business development and Robert Harper, product support manager, transportation, Insight Inc., […]
If You Spend IT, Efficiencies Will Come
While corporate departments such as operations are often high on the list for systems improvements, logistics departments are usually close to the bottom of the pecking order. As a result, many supply chain management systems are woefully behind the times. This, however, doesn’ t mean that logistics professionals have to or should accept this slight […]
Reducing Supply Chain Costs: Spend More to Save More
Managers who want to reduce supply chain costs need to spend more on transportation. The key to lower supply chain costs is holding less inventory. Buying more transportation lets you reduce inventory safely. The greatest mistake that manufacturers make today is equating transportation cost reductions with total available supply chain savings. In fact, transportation savings […]
NITL: A League All Their Own
The discussions at last month’s TransComp in Anaheim were wide ranging, covering port lockouts, homeland security, and globalization. But there was also a hint of what we might expect in 2003, and lest we grow too optimistic, economic recovery is not near at hand. A conversation I had with David Stubblefield, outgoing president of ABF, […]
Super-Charging Your Supply Chain
Companies use different options to fight the never-ending battle of optimizing their supply chains.
Winning Supply Chain Strategies: Adversity Breeds Creativity
While a slow economy drives many companies to wait out the siege, others do everything but. These winning companies look to the future, building supply chains based on creativity, velocity, collaboration, and speed. Here are their strategies for success.
Managing Your Spend
New strategies, reengineering, and powerful technology enable companies to revamp sourcing and procurement.
Using Aftermarket Service As a Strategic Weapon
Web-based inventory, supply chain planning, and forecasting tools are among the more important and growing applications in the supply chain industry. Within this maelstrom of supply chain management, customer relationship management, warehouse management, and ERP offerings, Atlanta, Ga.-based Servigistics is taking an aggressive position in aftermarket service. “Global leaders such as Dell, Toshiba, EMC, and […]
INSIGHT: Sticking With the Strategy
An in-house supply chain modeling system helps Henkel Consumer Adhesives react quicly to change.
Transforming Density into Savings
As companies continue to focus on supply chain management to increase efficiencies and drive down costs, they are examining every link in the supply chain—from manufacturing to logistics and transportation. But after carefully scrutinizing your supply chain and identifying strengths, one question remains: how do you turn those strengths into a means to achieve your […]
Brian Godfrey: An Explosive Career
Work is a blast for Brian Godfrey. As a logistics supervisor for Dyno Nobel North America, Godfrey is in charge of moving truck, railcar, and barge loads of ammonium nitrate (AN), a fertilizer used as an explosive in mining and construction. He negotiates transportation contracts, traces rail shipments, and routes his goods from manufacturing plants […]
Logistics Contingency Planning
Can your company weather a logistics disaster such as a terrorist attack, airport closure, or worker strike? These sudden disruptions can strand you—along with your customers’ freight. Here are tips on planning for a crisis, and handling emergency shipping when a major disruption happens, from Joel Childs, vice president of marketing, FedEx Custom Critical. 1. […]
Navigating the Rigors of NAFTA
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been the catalyst for many small- to mid-sized U.S. importers to expand their comfort zone and test the waters with new suppliers and customers. While many large or multi-national importers have processes in place to determine and track eligibility for NAFTA and other special trade programs, smaller […]
Network Software: Finding the Perfect Fit
A shift is occurring in the way logistics software is delivered. Companies have spent billions of dollars customizing, implementing, and maintaining supply chain software to improve efficiency and service. Yet, despite this investment, projects are often discontinued as software too quickly becomes shelfware. High failure rates and delayed ROI can be attributed to costs associated […]
Seeing’ Safe Ports: Connect to Protect
The emergence of new global logistics challenges in the wake of Sept. 11 has prompted the U.S. government to effectively secure our borders. But, of the 5.7 million containers arriving in the United States each year, less than two percent of all shipments offloaded at U.S. ports are inspected prior to arrival. Limited human resources […]
Web Portal Builds Concrete Relationships
Striving to stay competitive despite lower operational costs, St. Lawrence Cement Company turns to a web portal to facilitate order processing and delivery.
Are You a Logistics Laggard?
Logisticians get saddled with lots of responsibility when things go wrong—the shipment is late, the shipment is lost, the carrier filed Chapter 11, the ports are closed. Now we learn that we are not practicing “socially responsible logistics.” Talk about piling on! “The logistics discipline appears to be more of a laggard with respect to […]
Warehousing for the 21st Century
Companies explore merge-in-transit, crossdocking, and pool distribution in the never-ending quest to increase speed to market, improve service and inventory turns, and reduce costs.
Logistics 101: Back to Basics
Logistics can confound the newly initiated and veterans alike. So take out your notebook, sharpen your pencil, and take this Inbound Logistics short course on the fundamental concepts driving logistics theory and practice today.
Routing Guides: Inside the Matrix
Successful implementation of a routing guide feeds off constant communication among vendors, carriers, and consignees. Find out how you can help foster better shipping compliance among your supply chain partners with a dynamic routing guide.
Turning Invoices Into Intelligence
Don’t let bankruptcies in the freight payment industry overshadow the potential power of turning freight invoices into actionable information.
Karen Caswelch: Quality In High Gear
When Karen Caswelch joined Allison Transmission as director of purchasing last year, she had no corporate purchasing experience. But her record in operations and quality management made her supremely qualified to carry out her number-one mission. “The ultimate mandate,” Caswelch says, “is to keep the plants running. And you’ve got to keep them running with […]
CRM Plays Crucial, Often Confusing, Role in SCM
The importance of customer relationship management (CRM) within the supply chain is vitally important. This column offers my take on some important integration issues. The customer and the customer’s customer have been a critical part of the supply chain since its inception. The customer is quite clearly what the supply chain is all about. Having […]
Adding a Dash of SALT to Logistics
Speech technology developers cook up a new recipe for web applications.
Choosing Cross-Border Partners
Moving goods across U.S. borders into Mexico can be difficult if you don’t align yourself with the right partners and establish solid relationships with carriers and brokers. Here are suggestions to help you select your cross-border partners wisely, from Gene Sevilla-Secasa, vice president, managing director for Ryder Latin America. 1. Invest adequate time and do […]
What Do You Really Know About Intermodal?
Remember the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day? The premise was that his character was trapped in a time warp that had him continuously reliving the same day. The people who work in the intermodal industry can probably relate—except it’s not their industry that’s stuck in a time warp. It’s their image. Intermodal transportation can take […]
You Have Entered the Material Transfer Zone
The loading dock has become a critical component of virtually any supply chain strategy. Mistakes in dock design and equipment choices can have costly consequences that ripple throughout the supply chain. For instance, slowdowns and product damage can very quickly multiply when overhead door openings are too small and dock levelers too narrow to provide […]
CLM: The Rules are Changing
The rules are changing? I wish somebody would tell that to the longshoreman’s union. I was recently in the center of the dock lockout imbroglio in San Francisco, having made the trip to attend the Council of Logistics Management’s 2002 conference. Business as usual for dockworkers apparently means a 70+ percent increase over three years, […]
Sourcing Globally Now That The Rules Have Changed
MORE TO THE STORY: The e-Procurement Advantage During the 1980s and 1990s, manufacturers saved billions of dollars in inventory and other carrying costs by instituting effective just-in-time (JIT) supply chain management and production processes. These efforts were based on the fundamental assumption that, while global supply chains might experience short-term hiccups, they would run pretty […]
Looking Inside The Box
As budget limitations and executive missives compel logistics managers to streamline operating expenses, web-based procurement solutions have become one obvious fix, offering greater control over purchasing decisions, the opportunity to consolidate supply orders and shipments, and the promise of reduced costs.
The Supply Chain: A Canary in the Corporate Coal Mine
To avoid the fate of companies that collaborated with WorldCom, Enron, Vivendi and others, you must learn to read supply chain performance as a gauge of corporate financial fitness. SCM performance is a leading—not a lagging—indicator of a suppy chain partner’s true economic situation.
Bob Wegmann: Blood Work
As Americans jammed Red Cross blood centers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bob Wegmann and his staff worked the phones. Their mission: to get vendors to rush enough blood bags, swabs, printed forms, and other supplies to accommodate the hordes of donors. “Obviously, no one predicted Sept. 11. But we were able to predict, […]
Velant’s Automated Planning Solution
Two primary goals of transportation management are reducing costs and enhancing customer service. To meet these demands and improve its transportation planning offerings, Velant, a solution provider headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., has developed a managed service that integrates advanced technology with the expertise of logistics specialists. The company’s Transportation Management Center (TMC) is targeted at […]
NTE Builds Toshiba’s Public-Private Partnership
Two electronic trading networks help Toshiba win prime-level service and attractive rates from contract carriers.
Proactive Involvement Ensures Clean 3PL Startup
When applied appropriately, an outsourcing strategy can add strategic advantage to your organization. Whether the value lies in asset efficiency, cost containment, customer service, marketing strength, or technological advantage, many 3PL customers can show measurable improvement in one or more of these areas. Customers dissatisfied with a 3PL, on the other hand, often cite unrealized […]
Choosing the Right Logistics Consultant
Choosing a logistics consultant should not be a search for the lowest-cost solution, but rather a search for experience and success based on definitive criteria. Dr. Dick Powers, CEO and president of the Bend, Ore., and Manassas, Va.-based consulting firm INSIGHT, which solves logistics and supply chain issues with optimization-based solutions, offers these tips for […]
Container Carriers: Why Can’t We Make Red Tape a Thing of the Past?
Container shipping is one of the world’s youngest industries—younger, in fact, than the computer industry. When Malcolm McLean drove the first container onto a ship less than 50 years ago, Big Blue was already churning out early computing and communication systems. Despite the rapid evolution of computer technology, container shipping companies still fail to grasp […]
Building a High-Velocity Supply Chain Network
Managing an extended supply chain network effectively requires coordination among many geographically dispersed partners. Done well, you can reduce operational costs and increase bottom-line profitability and customer loyalty. Done poorly, you can face increased personnel, as well as higher inventory and rush charges, all incurred in an attempt to avoid dissatisfied customers. With increasing decentralization […]
Proactive Returns Management Yields Hard ROI
Multi-channel product distribution and stiff competition for more demanding and discerning customers require creative strategies for managing and maintaining customer relationships. As companies search for areas of opportunity to meet these needs, returns management tops the list.Product returns and their impact on a company’s bottom line is an age-old problem. The complexities of reverse product […]
Bridging Infrastructure Gaps In Latin America
By partnering with a 3PL, Lucent moves inventory closer to its end consumers, reduces inventory-carrying costs, and better manages product flow.
CF Bankruptcy: Labor Day
Consolidated Freightways files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Labor Day. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Can part of the reason for the demise of this once great carrier be laid at organized labor’s door? I remember meeting with two highly-placed CF executives six years ago. They were making the rounds, explaining to the press […]
Becoming a Better Trucking Customer
Put yourself in your motor carriers’ place for a moment. This past year brought more than a few bumps in the road. Union battles, driver shortages, rising insurance premiums, fluctuating fuel prices and surcharges, and increased safety and security costs have deflated profits and forced shippers, carriers, and supply chain partners to plug expectation gaps […]
Slow Economy? Invest Now in Logistics IT
While some companies have frozen investments in logistics and supply chain technology, forward-thinking companies seize the opportunity to gain a competitive edge.
Michael Trotter: Striking a Balance
Loading pallets with electrical supplies bound for factories and construction sites, “you learn quickly that you can’t set light bulbs on the bottom and put wire on the top,” laughs Michael Trotter, director of logistics at Van Meter Industrial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But for a distributor with 29,000 SKUs of all sizes and shapes—from […]