Articles
Checking In
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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