Articles

Commentary

Paul A. Myerson

Measuring to Manage or Barely Managing to Measure

Respondents to a Bain & Company survey say they run their supply chains only half as efficiently as top supply chain performers such as Toyota, Dell, and Home Depot. In fact, top-quartile performers spend just 4.2 percent of revenue on supply chain costs, compared to almost 10 percent for average performers in the same industry. […]

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Ryan Repich

Building Bench Strength With Supply Chain Graduates

Gripped by financial pain in 2008, organizations across all industries cut labor to keep the lights on. While this approach provided short-term relief, many businesses were left with a resource plan that was thin. Within the past year, the economy has improved and across most industries, organizational growth has translated into increased pressure for businesses’ […]

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Steve Johnson

Missouri Gets Shipping

Missouri’s central location, sixth-largest public road and highway system, service by all seven Class I railroads, third-largest inland port in the nation, and major airfreight centers in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield might be enough to attract the attention of most nationwide shippers looking for a strategic Midwest location. But Total Quality Logistics (TQL) […]

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Jeff Metersky

Use Supply Chain Modeling to Mitigate Port Shutdowns and Other Risks

Recent massive strikes among dockworkers on the California coast brought the reality of supply chain continuity planning to the forefront once again for global businesses. The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports handle nearly half of the nation’s cargo, and are the main gateway for imports from Asia, including automobiles, furniture, clothing, electronic products, and […]

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Jack Rosenberg

When Real Estate Intersects With Logistics

Fulfillment centers across the globe are adapting to better suit customer demands. We’re seeing increased automation and robotics, more office improvements, higher levels of complexity, greater security, and stepped-up employee workplace amenities, among others. In short, businesses are expecting more. And they want more now. Leasing new property is an important part of expanding or […]

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Keith Biondo

XPO Goes Long with Con-way Play

Merger and acquisition activity in the transportation and logistics sector has been fast and furious over the past few months. Still, it’s hard to imagine that UPS’s acquisition of Coyote Logistics ($1.8 billion) and Infor’s GT Nexus move ($675 million) have become little more than sidebars to this summer’s blockbuster feature—XPO Logistics’ bookended $3 billion-plus […]

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Thomas W. Derry

Why Excellence in Supply Management Matters More Than Ever

In today’s competitive business environment, having visionary leaders and great products is not enough. In the past 20 years, companies have experienced a profound shift, and have dramatically increased their spending on external suppliers. This places the supply management function in the spotlight as a key driver of profitability. The better supply management teams are […]

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Improving Fleet Safety with On-Board Video

Transportation is vital to a supply chain that efficiently manages the flow of goods—physically connecting manufacturers to their customers to provide them access to their favorite products. A break in that link—such as late deliveries, or damaged or stolen goods—can be detrimental to the success of a business, negatively impacting supply chain relationships and, in […]

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Felecia Stratton

Just Another Brick in the Mall 

Travel around the world, and you see up-and-coming economies sporting many shiny new buildings, airports, ports, and factories, while more mature economies display aging legacy infrastructure. It’s the nature of progress. You see the same parallel in retail operations, where newer e-commerce models seem to overcome legacy brick-and-mortar models. But not entirely. Yes, e-commerce is […]

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Chris Scott

A Fresh Route for Latin American Produce

More than 21 million metric tons of fruits and vegetables were imported into the United States in 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Approximately 35 percent of that produce comes from Central and South America. While Latin American perishable exports have grown dramatically in recent years, some logistical shortcomings prevent maximum cold […]

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Dave Manning

Driver Shortage Threatens to Slow Intermodal Growth

The shortage of qualified drivers threatens the intermodal industry’s continued growth. The challenge for intermodal is not only hiring enough professional drivers, but also retaining them. For many transportation companies, attracting and retaining drivers are the biggest challenges. The extreme number of multi-hour delays along the intermodal chain, combined with the impersonal treatment drivers receive […]

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Paul A. Myerson

Procurement and Purchasing: Buying into Lean

While supply chain costs, primarily procurement and transportation, can range from 50 to 70 percent of sales, some companies place too much emphasis on the traditional focus of reducing material costs in supply processes. Applying Lean principles to procurement and purchasing processes can identify non-traditional sources of waste, in some cases creating a paradigm shift […]

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How to Make Ship Arrival Analytics and Predictions More Precise

Ninety percent of the world’s logistics traffic moves via ocean transport, and until today, the entire logistics community of shippers, forwarders, carriers, and tracking technology providers has suffered from the struggle to consistently predict the precise arrival of the world’s ocean vessels with reliable certainty. Many in the supply chain industry claim that dynamically predicting […]

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How to Wirelessly Enable Your Supply Chain

Just in time is challenging enough. It’s even more so when it involves high-value assets such as construction, forestry, and agricultural equipment. That was the case at one major U.S. manufacturer who supplied those kinds of equipment. For years, the company’s supply chain used specialized containers to shuttle work-in-process inventory between multiple suppliers and manufacturing […]

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Keith Biondo

You Say You Want a Co-Evolution?

In human evolution, scientists theorize that primitive man existed 3.8 million years ago. Progress was slow until 200,000 years ago, when modern man made his appearance. Then came a spark of progress: animal domestication, farming, global expansion, refined toolmaking, and more. What we today call the third-party logistics (3PL) sector followed that same evolutionary process. […]

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