Articles
Checking In
Help From Your Warehouse
Your warehouse and fulfillment operations—and the people, partners, and processes that make them run—have just gotten monumentally more important, because a series of convergent events are raising national supply chain costs at every touch. Let’s unpack the why. In the industrial and manufacturing sectors, added costs on materials and products impacted by ongoing trade friction […]
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Singularity: Shape-Shifting Self-Aware Supply Chains?
Recent AI advances indicate that self-aware, or cognitive supply chains, may be closer than we think.
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Global Trade Resilience
Global trade analysts predicted the sky was falling, but that is not currently the case. How did they get the projections so wrong?
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Knowledge is Power
There are 13,000 unfilled supply chain positions nationwide, according to recent labor surveys. I think there are more. A lot more. To fill those positions, we need young professionals who possess the knowledge and skills necessary to manage the supply chains of the future. Schools and universities are doing their part to develop curriculums that […]
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When Worlds Combine
Inbound Logistics continues to provide actionable content to help drive supply chain change.
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When Worlds Collide
In retail there are two worlds or approaches: online and traditional. It appears the online retailers have been winning in the market with all types of consumers, even in manufacturing and industrial products. But don’t count the traditional retail world out yet. Good supply chain management practices, along with blended approaches to serving the customer, […]
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A Lot to Learn
In the not-so-distant past, logistics and supply chain practitioners had just a few ways to boost their skillsets and keep current on the latest best practices. The options were mostly limited to on-the-job training, or required an unrealistic investment in time. Today, a world of resources is available to help even the busiest logistics professionals […]
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Post Office Dings E-Commerce?
Two recent and important developments will impact domestic and international e-commerce shipments. The first one concerns the U.S. Postal Service’s relationship with Amazon. Let me set the stage. The Postal Service lost $2.7 billion in 2017. U.S. taxpayers guarantee the perennially stressed postal worker retirement fund. And first-class mail receipts are off by $1.8 billion […]
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Talent Gap or Training Gap?
In the past, workforce training and development for blue- and gray-collar jobs took a back seat at many businesses and academic institutions. Schools often steered students toward white-collar career paths, while businesses put cutting costs, staying globally competitive, and turning a profit above training workers—a short-sighted focus on the next quarter rather than the next […]
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Conserving a National Resource
Everyone has an opinion about how to combat the truck driver shortage—from boosting pay and benefits to lowering the age for getting a CDL (see Good Question, page 10) to self-driving trucks. But one valuable weapon you don’t hear much about is driver wellness programs. Carriers can implement these programs quickly, and net near immediate […]
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Returning Experience
The war between the retail/e-commerce customer experience and increasing costs is heating up, thanks to the impact that rising transportation prices are having on the retail process. That trend plagues e-commerce players and retailers, both large and small. For example, in July 2018, spot market trucking costs were up 30 percent year-over-year, according to DAT. […]
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Dual Dynamics
If you are using a third-party logistics (3PL) provider for truck brokerage alone, you are leaving money on the table. I wrote that eight years ago, when commenting on the results of our annual 3PL market research. Why did I say that? Because logistics providers have evolved and developed an array of solutions that bring […]
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GDPR: Privacy, Yes. Innovation, No
If you spend too much time clearing privacy protection notices from your email box, thank the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But what exactly is this regulation and how might it impact future supply chain technological innovation? GDPR is a new rule with the goal of protecting European Union residents’ personal data and adding privacy […]
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Demanding Service
It is exactly the wrong time to abandon a demand-driven approach to the supply chain.
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Checking In: The Last Grimy Mile
At the end of March, in between nor’easters in New York City, I went out for a lunchtime stroll. I wanted to check out the 14 new gleaming skyscrapers of the Hudson Yards development—a “self contained, e-commerce friendly city within a city”—where thousands of young urban professionals won’t ever have to leave their apartments to […]
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Sky. Falling or Not?
Trade uncertainty. Tariffs. Protectionism. Retaliation. Supply chain disruption. What is happening? For the past year, we have been hearing shouted warnings that global trade as we know it will end in 2017…no, in 2018….no, in 2019. “The future of the global trade system faces more risk and uncertainty than at any time since it was […]
Read MoreThe Human Experience
I am adding something to the acronym alphabet soup: HX or the Human Experience. In the ever-evolving supply chain process—shaped by automation, co-bots, and the global search for the lowest skilled hourly wage—are the cards irrevocably stacked against the humanity who grind the operational logistics gears that make it all happen? Recent developments in supply […]
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Status Grow? Yes.
I often disagree with IL’s publisher, but I can’t argue with his perspective in this edition. There is a great opportunity for growth in many business sectors, and supply chain excellence is fundamentally important in that economic environment. It wasn’t always that way, however. This publication’s mission since its inception in 1981 has been to […]
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Status Quo? No.
The coming year is destined to be one of some major and minor changes in business operations. Given your role in logistics, you will face a perfect storm of new. Here are some events and trends that will drive change and the need to think flexibly and laterally, and adapt operations accordingly. Domestic trucking capacity […]
Read MoreCX in the Era of Supply Chain Impatience
Whether your customer is the end consumer or B2B buyer, supply chain and customer service performance expectations are converging. Providing an excellent customer experience (CX) requires super-expedited and sometimes free delivery. E-commerce customers increasingly choose to pay for same-day delivery, according to a DHL survey. Here at Inbound Logistics, we call that supply chain impatience […]
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