Articles
Commentary
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 […]
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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.
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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. […]
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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.
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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 […]
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Transitioning 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.
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Unlocking the Potential of Case and Item Picking Systems
Whether refining existing systems or embarking on the automation journey, the secret to optimizing the picking process lies in data. Here’s how to ensure success.
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Beyond the Rush: Practical Warehouse Strategies for a Sustainable Peak Season
Sustainability and safety are not seasonal—they’re foundational. But during peak season, warehouse operators must elevate their efforts. Here’s how.
Read MoreWhat Supply Chain Tool or Strategy Is Your Most Valuable Player?
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the unsung MVP of the modern supply chain. They connect transportation, insurance, compliance, and analytics into one real-time system. –Johnny McCord CEO and Founder Loadsure AI-powered process intelligence. By using data to map the flow of supply chain processes, organizations can uncover bottlenecks and delays, automate tasks, and measure performance […]
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5 Supply Chain Developments That Defined 2025
As we closed our last edition of 2025, I looked back at reader emails and conversations and saw a clear pattern: This was a year of fundamental transformation. Evolving technology, geopolitical events, and demanding customers created constant pressure on your supply chains and drove five strategic developments. 1. Tariffs redefine the cost and complexity of […]
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How to Conquer Seasonal Surges
Here are three actionable strategies that retailers can implement to help overcome peak season inventory challenges while building a more robust, agile, and profitable supply chain for the future.
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Somewhere Henry Ford is Smiling
Henry Ford revolutionized car manufacturing by inventing the moving assembly line. Besides saving time and money, that new process made the Model T affordable and ubiquitous. Today, thousands of vehicle plants around the world still use that method. Using Ford’s method, modern vehicle assembly lines are a moving and sequential process where a car’s frame—called […]
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The Hidden Cost of Inefficient Inbound Operations — and How Visibility Changes Everything
When operations leaders talk about supply chain performance, the conversation almost always starts with outbound: on-time delivery, fill rates, and transportation spend. But the truth is, the story of outbound success often begins on the inbound dock—and too often, that story is one of delay, chaos, and unseen cost. The Invisible Bottleneck Inbound operations are […]
Read MoreWhat New Job Will AI Create in Logistics/Supply Chain Management?
AUDIT AI risk auditor. As artificial intelligence takes over routine planning, we’ll need experts who audit the decisions it makes. This role will interrogate AI-driven forecasts, sourcing choices, and risk models. –Lisa Montague Commercial Director (South), AGI Global Logistics Ethics and governance director. This position drives the safe and ethical adoption of AI across all […]
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Shining a Light on Dark Factories
A manufacturing revolution is underway in factories around the world. “Lights-out” manufacturing is finally being realized in a few highly automated and roboticized locations. This dramatic shift—also known as the “dark factory”—is the ultimate objective of industrial automation: a factory so automated that it requires little or no human presence. Humans need the lights, machines […]
Read More3 Logistics Metrics That Matter More Than You Think
A late truck, a surprise freight charge, a broken pallet—these things show up in dashboards daily. They’re the kind of problems that seem minor at first. You fix them and move on, but over time, they add up.
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