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Online Grocery Shifts into Hyperspeed
The retail grocery industry was upended by the COVID-19 outbreak. As consumers rushed to stock up on food and other items during quarantine, retailers and their partners collaborated in new ways to respond to skyrocketing demand.
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What supply chain technology would you accelerate?
Actionable big data—simply because it is the key to unlocking the fully optimized supply chain.
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Three Ways to Mitigate Insider Risk in Your Supply Chain
“Insider threat” has long been a familiar security topic for C-suite executives in every industry. In fact, 90% of organizations feel vulnerable to insider attacks, according to IBM. Yet, when creating risk mitigation programs for insider threats, many organizations overlook their nonemployees—the people who work for their third-party vendors, partners, and contractors.
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What Can 3PLs Do?
Can third-party logistics (3PL) providers bring chaos to order? Or order to chaos? For starters, they can help you wrangle and bring some order to the current COVID-caused confusion in your logistics process. We’ve been reporting on how logistics partners can help you solve complicated business challenges and leverage opportunities long before “3PL” was a […]
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5 Ways to Attain Resilience
The pandemic caused unprecedented demand disruptions as lockdowns swept the globe. What could we have done better to prepare for a scenario as unexpected as the one created by COVID-19?
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Traditional Retail Supply Chains Tackle Omni Challenges
Distribution centers (DCs) traditionally shipped orders in bulk to retailers or wholesalers. In the early days of e-commerce, most retailers used a small area in an existing DC to fulfill online orders or outsourced the process to a third party. As online demand grew, many retailers opened fulfillment centers dedicated to picking and packing individual orders shipped to individual end users. DCs and fulfillment centers have much different types of operations and cost structures.
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Four Behaviors of Design Thinking
The pace of change inside an organization should be faster than the pace outside. This can be especially difficult in the supply chain, where it seems like keeping up with customer demand is next to impossible. Your solutions need to drive faster, more efficient production and delivery, and your competitors are just as hungry to meet that demand as you.
Read MoreHow Small to Mid-Sized Businesses Can Recover Faster
In addition to surging e-commerce demand, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are facing increased shipping costs, logistical challenges from decreased plane traffic and closed borders, and extended shipping times. Many SMBs have struggled to rapidly adapt their shipping operations to fit this new landscape. Here are a few things you can do to recover from […]
Read MoreHow to Make Supply Chains “Antifragile”
Cost savings has been the number one priority for heads of procurement and finance across industries. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that this must be achieved through lean, just-in-time processes and a focus on limited inventory. COVID-19 exposed just how quickly this can create shortages in critical industries like food and manufacturing — in […]
Read MoreYard Automation Addresses Three Weak Spots to Build Supply Chain Resilience
While there aren’t many quick fixes when it comes to mitigating global supply chain disruption, supply chain leaders will turn to solutions that directly address the biggest weaknesses throughout the supply chain that have been highlighted as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak: demand, labor, and energy. Automation brings resiliency and velocity to areas of […]
Read More3 Ways Retailers Can Get on the Fast Track to Digital Transformation
Retailers can use these three practical tips to successfully execute their digital transformation: Make digital moves your strategy centerpiece: Develop a mobile and web commerce initiative right away. Assume people are using your app or web commerce interface for the first time. This is because the number of new users is vastly increasing as a […]
Read MoreFive Keys for Turning Challenge into Opportunity
To capitalize on what they’ve learned, transform, and thrive in a post-COVID world, supply chain leaders should focus on the five core pillars: People. Leaders must reassure, clarify, protect, encourage, motivate, recognize, and reward people they manage. Each of these actions can make a fundamental difference in a successful post-COVID-19 transformation. When the crisis hit, […]
Read MoreCrying Over Spilled Milk: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Waste
What the food supply chain community learned from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis was that having the right technologies implemented was the difference between days or weeks to reroute, reschedule, repack, and reorganize goods to ensure delivery at a pre-COVID-19 standard.
Read MoreReopening Fulfillment and Distribution Centers in the Wake of COVID-19
The chaos and disruption from the COVID-19 outbreak is slowly moving toward recovery for businesses. Like most enterprises, fulfillment and distribution centers will not be able to simply “flip a switch” and return to normal operations. The complexity is even greater for networks that span multiple states or countries. Reopening will require a rigorous methodology […]
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USMCA: A Bright Light for Shippers
Many businesses around the country are suffering due to the economic impacts of COVID-19. Small and mid-sized businesses especially are being hit hard, with thousands in survival mode. Furthermore, declines in exports and global commerce are affecting the logistics and transportation sectors. However, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.
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How Returns Impact the Warehouse and What You Can Do About It
Returns have always been a challenge, but distributors today are experiencing a surge in returned items and orders. The cost of return deliveries in the United States will increase to $550 billion in 2020, according to Statista. That’s up from $314 billion just four years ago.
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What COVID-19 supply chain pivot impressed you the most? Why?
One Million Masks, founded by Shafqat Islam, which has built a digital supply chain. Powered by UPS, they have secured hundreds of thousands of PPE units for hospitals. Furthermore, it demonstrates a supply chain that was built in months that otherwise would have taken years. Over the coming months, we will continue to see this type of rapid innovation from savvy organizations.
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What’s Lurking in Your Supply Chain?
You may think your company is well protected when it comes to cybersecurity, but an often overlooked source of vulnerability is your supply chain. If you can’t honestly say you are fully apprised of the security postures of your vendors, partners, and contractors, then you are already at major risk of a cyberattack.
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In Defense of You
You’ve failed at logistics. So says David Segal in his recent article entitled "What Happened to the Great American Logistics Machine?" in The New York Times. Here are the article’s punchlines: The virus is "winning at the logistics game," and "let us acknowledge the obvious: The country is flunking a curriculum that it basically wrote." […]
Read MoreWhat’s the most unexpectedly good advice you’ve received about the supply chain?
Speed is not always the solution. Breaking shipments into inventory replenishment and just-in-time SKUs allows price and transit time optimization. Asia-to-U.S.-East-Coast transit through the Panama Canal versus the Suez Canal differs by 7 to 13 days. Pushing inventory cargo to the slower/lower-cost options provides free warehousing on the water while reducing overall landed cost. —Alan […]
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