Articles
Commentary
Other Reasons Why Supply Chain Stress Won’t End Soon
Our "new normal" global consumption reality won’t be ending soon. It’s not just e-commerce, virus buying, and the resultant impact on transport lift availability that’s driving shortages. Other factors augment long-term stress on your ability to marshal supplies and source transport to serve customers. Millennials with buying power, and there are lots of them, will […]
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It’s Time for Women in Transportation
When the pandemic first hit the United States, it wiped out millions of jobs, particularly among women who found themselves back home and coordinating everything from elderly parent medical issues to home-school activities for kids.
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Avoiding Freight Detention and Seizure
Knowing the most common reasons CBP seizes a shipment can help you avoid the hassle.
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There’s No Easy Button for AI and ML
It’s easy to get excited about using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform supply chain and logistics operations. Take a bunch of data, run it through a model, and uncover the hidden answers that take your business to the next level.
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It’s Time to Rethink the Routing Guide
The routing guide is the manifestation of a shipper’s transportation strategy and a rough estimate of its budget for the upcoming year. It connects the annual bid with actual load tendering within a TMS, and strategically allocates and assigns each shipment to the appropriate carrier.
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3 Ways Dynamic Pricing Helps Retailers
Dynamic pricing is everywhere. Just about anything purchased through Amazon has been impacted by some element of dynamic pricing. Surge pricing on Uber, toll road prices that rise as traffic builds up, and even concert tickets are using the technology.
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How to Import Duty-Free with Section 321
Running an e-commerce business can be a great source of income, but it can also be complicated. Ordering products from the other side of the world, navigating global logistics and even setting up successful sales channels are all a huge problem for retailers to overcome. Then throw into the mix of this a huge trade […]
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Navigating Unexpected Hiccups
Uncertainties and unexpected hiccups can hit businesses at any time. Without resilience and enough preparedness, a business can struggle to cope with these unforeseen events.
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7 Critical Questions You Need to Ask
With a huge number of constantly shifting variables, suppliers, and other factors to consider, it’s easy to feel that managing supply chain risk is an unending battle that you’ll never win.
Read MoreBuild an Agile and Resilient Supply Chain in 4 Steps
In an era when the most unpredictable challenge imaginable, a global pandemic, turned the business world upside down, the need for a reliable supply chain that can react quickly to any and all disruptions became the top priority for organizations. This is by no means an easy feat, and many are familiar with the concept […]
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Catch Me When I Fall
A trust fall is a team-building exercise where the one doing the falling willingly trusts that those standing behind will catch them before they hit bottom. We chose the trust fall as an apt theme for our annual third-party logistics edition. Whether you voluntarily fall or are shoved by business realities—pandemic, labor shortages, remote workforces, […]
Read MoreFive Solutions to Costly Time-Critical Shipping Challenges
Delays in time-critical shipping can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars lost, missed opportunities, and even loss of life. Whether shipping critical manufacturing and airplane parts, vaccines, organs for transplant, or lab work, these important shipments must be picked up and arrive on time. However, industry statistics have shown that one in three time-critical shipments […]
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Demand Accuracy In Your Supply Chain
During the pandemic, a lot of the focus on supply chain tended to be on the supply side, and rightly so, due to the highly publicized sourcing, production, distribution, and transportation issues. As a result, organizations continue to look to increase productivity, flexibility, and agility through programs such as Lean, increased automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and others.
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How has the pandemic affected supply chain partnerships?
The pandemic magnified the need for collaborative partnerships between service providers and customers. We have seen things happening in the market you almost couldn’t make up in Hollywood, and those that have remained transparent and collaborative in navigating these challenges have succeeded. —Matt Friedman Vice President, Sales, Warehousing Mainfreight Fluctuating production and consumer demand, coupled […]
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Solving the Global Data Dilemma
For as much time and effort spent trying to perfect the systems and technologies we rely on for global logistics, it seems the industry has lost sight of how people actually get work done.
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Fixing Manufacturers’ Broken Traditional Selling Processes
Why is it so hard for manufacturers to go digital? The end answer is always the same: fear. Fear of change, fear of losing revenue, and fear of potentially jeopardizing relationships with dealers and distributors is paralyzing manufacturers.
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EV Power Play
The U.S. electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing sector is about to get a sales boost from the Biden Administration. The EV market has been rocking because of the continued growing interest in sustainability, especially now that the bleeding-edge vehicle phase is behind us. President Biden confirmed that EVs would get a stimulus in the not-yet-passed multi-trillion-dollar […]
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What fictional character or historical figure would you put in charge of global vaccine logistics and distribution?
Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, understands how to harness business and technology to get results—even if some of the measures needed are unpopular. His attention to detail and insatiable appetite for perfection would allow him to pivot and change course when faced with gaps in the distribution process that others may fear.
Read MoreNavigating Demand Spikes: Automating Your Way to Successful Peak Seasons
As many countries grapple with another wave of the pandemic, retailers are continually challenged to adjust to shifting consumer habits, anticipate spikes in demand for specific items and meet delivery expectations. For many retailers, 2020 emphasized that there may no longer be just one peak shopping season, but rather peaks and/or ‘micro peaks’ can strike […]
Read More4 Ways to Unlock the True Potential of Warehouse Automation
In January, I predicted 2020 would kick off the decade of orchestration as the next logical step toward greater operational efficiency in the supply chain. Little did we know all that 2020 would bring in accelerating the push for interoperability and communication amongst warehouse resources. Now, just months later, there can be no doubt that […]
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