Articles
Commentary
Inside Job: Embedding Risk Protection Where Freight Decisions Happen
For decades, cargo insurance has been an afterthought in freight operations, an administrative box to tick after rates are negotiated and the load is on the move. That separation made sense when every policy required phone calls, paperwork, and manual underwriting. But in a digital, data-driven supply chain, risk protection can no longer live outside the workflow. It belongs inside it.
Read More
WHAT’S THE WORD: The Language of Logistics
From refreshers to recently coined terms and emerging concepts (should we be concerned about shadow AI?), here are some quick definitions to add to your logistics dictionary.
Read More
Real-Time Sales Data: The Missing Link
Despite progress in supply chain digitization, automation, and AI, one gap undermines sales efficiency: real-time sales data sharing between retailers and suppliers. This disconnect creates forecasting challenges, burdens inventory systems, and slows responsiveness at a time when speed and agility are critical for competitiveness.
Read More
Follow This Roadmap To a Lean, Sustainable Supply Chain
Few companies realize that, when implemented in the supply chain, Lean and Green are not contradictory but can be mutually beneficial. This is a good reason for firms to adopt an integrated Lean and Green strategy.
Read More
Renewable Energy Fuels the Future
Renewable energy is becoming an increasingly essential component of sustainable supply chains for many interconnected reasons that address both environmental imperatives and business realities.
Read More
Seeing Around the Next Bend
Global supply networks involve many partners and recent shocks have shown how quickly a single disruption can ripple through the system. Traditional visibility stitched together data from transportation, warehouse, and enterprise systems and augmented it with GPS or RFID tags; those tools provide only snapshots of past movements.
Read More
Are Humans in “The Loop” of Your Future-fit Strategy?
I recently counseled a stealth startup on its go-to-market strategy. It’s a familiar story—Silicon Valley-based, computer science DNA, venture capital funding, and an ambition to jump on the AI train and automate backend processes better than predecessors.
Read More
Foresight and Flexibility: Winning in a Constrained Semiconductor Market
Amidst a memory chip shortage, maintaining a long-term view on cost versus continuity will not only weather this cycle but gain a competitive advantage in the market that follows.
Read More
Powering Progress with Electrification
The utility sector is at the heart of an electrification wave. As societies pivot from fossil fuels to electricity, utilities and power generation companies are not just managing grids; they are driving the charge. Power providers are being asked to deliver more electricity than ever—faster, cleaner, and more reliably—while modernizing outdated infrastructure and contending with fragile global supply chains.
Read More
Deploying Physical AI for Smarter, Safer Inbound Logistics
Physical AI will transform many aspects of the supply chain. Starting with a small, focused inbound logistics use case now can make your warehouse operations more efficient, accurate, and safe, as well as help your organization build the skills needed to extend Physical AI into other areas of your business.
Read More
How Data Can Fix Demand Matching
Supply-demand mismatches are more than just inconvenient; they are costly. From inflated transportation spend to missed SLAs, poor alignment erodes both profitability and customer trust. The solution? Advanced analytics, not just for hindsight, but for foresight and real-time agility.
Read More
Enabling Smarter Government Logistics
If I have learned one thing in my decades of navigating defense logistics, it’s that we can’t afford to solve tomorrow’s readiness problems with yesterday’s systems. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the first new technology with the viability to change how we forecast demand, manage obsolescence, and optimize supply chains. But the path to realizing its potential is met with structural, cultural, and bureaucratic hurdles.
Read More
7 Principles That Make Strategic Relationships Work
Over my years of being part of the third-party logistics discipline, I have often seen and heard shipper/3PL relationships characterized as a marriage. This is a fitting characterization, given the covenant nature and commitment of these strategic business agreements.
Read More
Crises in the Middle East Call for a New Approach in Supply Chain Resilience
By focusing on four key strategic imperatives — identifying risks, understanding their origins, and knowing when and how to activate resilience measures — businesses can transform their Middle East and global supply chains and seek competitive advantage.
Read More
Random Stow or the Disorganized Warehouse?
Random Stow is a warehouse putaway method driven by an algorithm developed by Coupang, an ecommerce monster and formidable Amazon competitor. For the Korean market, Coupang uses this counterintuitive warehouse management method, which stores items wherever there is open shelf space, rather than grouping similar SKUs together. The warehouse might look disorganized. But it is […]
Read More
How Agentic AI Is Redefining Route Optimization in Last-Mile Delivery
Traditional route optimization generates plans based on the data you give it. Agentic AI takes those plans and manages them through execution, making adjustments as new information arrive.
Read More
Riding the 2026 Wave
While doom-scrolling through Facebook late one night, I saw a painting by a friend that captured something I hadn’t quite been able to put into words—so much so that I reached out and asked if we could use it for our January cover. It perfectly reflects a good way to look at the year ahead. […]
Read More
6 Ways to Reclaim Margin
For many mid-size companies, freight costs have quietly become a dangerous threat to profit margins. These six strategies offer actionable starting points to reclaim margin and build more resilient logistics operations.
Read More
AI in Supply Chain Management: How Useful Will It Be in 2026?
Rating Highly Readers rated AI’s expected usefulness on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being transformative). Note: Fractions were rounded up. Average rating: 8 Range of answers: 3 to 10 Artificial intelligence will be transformative—driving forecasting, inventory optimization, and decision-making. It’s also powering digital twin roadmaps by connecting AI-driven forecasts to simulation models […]
Read MoreTransitioning to a Circular Supply Chain
Shifting from a linear to a circular supply chain model is not a challenge of the distant future but a pressing matter for supply chain professionals around the world.
Read More