Articles
Commentary
Reinventing Logistics in the Age of Amazon
n 1909, Henry Ford said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Decades later, Jeff Bezos said, “Customers are divinely discontent. Their expectations are never static—they go up.”
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Leveraging Real Time Information to Better Manage Logistics
When it comes to shipping freight around the world, costs and on-time delivery top the list of concerns for everyone from shipping managers to CEOs. Having strong, accessible data is essential.
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Blockchain Moves Beyond the ‘Walled Garden’ Stage
On Halloween 2008, a mysterious paper entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System appeared on a cryptography mailing list. Its author used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and to this day no one is sure of their true identity. Nevertheless, the the paper unleashed a revolution. While the Bitcoin paper’s objective was to establish an alternative […]
Read MoreGOOD QUESTION | What’s the quickest way to improve return logistics?
Make sure information systems, distribution networks, and transportation capabilities work together seamlessly. Perry Belcastro Senior Vice President, Fulfillment Services Saddle Creek Logistics Services Leverage artificial intelligence to identify key drivers causing returns/claims. This can provide insights that can be used to optimize delivery, reduce volume, and provide critical information to engineering to improve products. Tom […]
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3PL Growth Spurt. Why?
The managed logistics sector thrives both in times of positive change and in times of uncertainty. We’ve recently had plenty of both. In today’s bipolar economy, it’s no wonder that U.S. 3PLs had their best-ever year in 2018. Forty percent of 3PLs report top-line sales growth of 20% or better in our annual 3PL Perspectives […]
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IBP and Lean: A Match Made in Heaven
Acknowledging that we are in a “whitewater rapids” phase of today’s global economy, and hence supply chain, leads us to the question: Who is steering the ship and how?
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Operating a Purpose-Driven Supply Chain
Leading with purpose creates an impact that resonates across a business—including employees, customers, partners, and shareholders. It can often be a complicated process, but it doesn’t need to be. For global brands that source raw materials, move products through global supply chains across borders, and ultimately deliver a product or experience to a customer, understanding […]
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Filling the Manufacturing Skills Gap
The manufacturing skills gap may leave a projected 2.4 million positions open in the coming decade, with a potential economic impact of $2.5 trillion. How can manufacturers prepare and fill positions with qualified individuals? What training and ongoing education strategies will enable the necessary skills? Predictive analytics and machine learning can eliminate the guesswork in […]
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Stop Calling It Backhaul
A backhaul is a means of returning drivers and equipment to their origin or domicile. It’s that happy place where sales can command the highest rates for haul and the customer connection is at its best. It stands to reason, however, that one company’s origin point is another company’s wasteland in terms of relationships and […]
Read MoreGOOD QUESTION | What’s the most neglected part of the supply chain?
Reverse logistics is usually an afterthought. Heather Jarvis-Gann Logistics & Dispatch Crestwood Midstream Partners LP Defining what supply chain management is for your company is key to writing the right job description and attracting the right talent. Tyler Chamberlain, MBA Supply Chain Manager Capital One Compliance is often viewed as a cost center and is […]
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Conflicted
As a culture, are we really committed to sustainability? Yes and no. Conventional wisdom can be contradictory. For example, some of you are reading this on paper. BAD! Yet studies show that fast-growth carbon capturing recyclable paper is much more sustainable than the gigawatts of energy and massive server farms needed to deliver Inbound Logistics […]
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GOOD QUESTION | What’s one supply chain myth you’d like to debunk?
Myth: Reducing labor costs is the best way to improve a supply chain operation. Much bigger gains can be made in reducing total supply chain cost by improving service levels and reducing lead times.
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Three Steps to Addressing the Staffing Shortages in Manufacturing & Logistics
As baby boomers in manufacturing and logistics look toward retirement, there aren’t new workers to take their place. Millennial and Gen-Z workers just aren’t interested in the work—and, as a result, valuable jobs are being left unfilled.
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Time to Stop Hating the ‘A’ Word
To small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), the “A” word usually coincides with fear and frustration. While small business owners love to hate Amazon, the time has come to embrace the changing purchasing and distribution landscape.
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Managing Change in Turbulent Times
We are now in a "white water rapids" phase in terms of the global economy, requiring flexibility from the processes, technology, and people in the supply chain to navigate these rough waters. Making the transition to a truly flexible and lean supply chain, especially during these turbulent times, involves changing the three elements necessary for […]
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Help From Your Warehouse
Your warehouse and fulfillment operations—and the people, partners, and processes that make them run—have just gotten monumentally more important, because a series of convergent events are raising national supply chain costs at every touch. Let’s unpack the why. In the industrial and manufacturing sectors, added costs on materials and products impacted by ongoing trade friction […]
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GOOD QUESTION | What’s the first thing you would do to address the supply chain talent gap?
Cast a wider net. Recruit graduates with non-traditional degrees. Work with vocational schools to create two-year-degree supply chain programs. Perhaps even create near-shore supply chain centers of expertise.
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Singularity: Shape-Shifting Self-Aware Supply Chains?
Recent AI advances indicate that self-aware, or cognitive supply chains, may be closer than we think.
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Tackling the Talent Gap From the Inside Out
To address the logistics talent gap, we need to put far more emphasis—and money—on sourcing future leaders from inside our companies.
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Soy to the World
The longer the trade tensions between the United States and other countries persist, the more the U.S. agricultural industry needs to rally around containerized soybean shipping to overseas markets.
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