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How Millennials Are Driving Modern Mobility in the Supply Chain

A recent analysis of U.S. Census data by the Pew Research Center found that more than 30 percent of today’s American workers are of the millennial generation. This percentage is expected to rise as an increasing number of those born between the early 1980s and mid-2000s enter the workforce. Within a few short years, we […]

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Lease Me a Loan: Transport Financing on the Upswing

Lease Me a Loan: Transport Financing on the Upswing

Today more businesses rely on leases, loans, and equipment lines of credit to finance increased spending on new equipment. Businesses have increased their capital equipment spending for the seventh consecutive year, with overall new business volume growing by 2.5 percent, according to a recent Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA) study. The equipment-financing sector outperformed […]

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Intermodal Volumes Best in Nearly Four Years

Total intermodal volumes climbed 7.2 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2018, the strongest gain since Q2 2014, according to the Intermodal Association of North America’s (IANA) Intermodal Market Trends & Statistics report. Domestic containers increased 6.2 percent, international intermodal volumes grew 7 percent, and trailers led overall growth at 14.5 percent. “Drivers for […]

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Dangerous Goods Compliance: Why It Needs to Be Redefined

The landscape for shipping dangerous goods (DG) and hazardous materials (hazmat) continues to evolve. With thousands of items classified as “hazardous” and shipping regulations becoming more complex, moving DG in a secure, safe, compliant manner is more critical than ever. Unfortunately, those responsible for DG/hazmat face an uphill battle – not only in meeting evolving […]

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10 Ways To Play IT Safe

10 Ways To Play IT Safe

State-sponsored and individual bad actors will escalate supply chain cybersecurity risks. Here are 10 threats and trends to look out for across business, governmental, and personal arenas: 1. Software updates—the new Trojan Horse. Criminals use the normal software update process to get companies to infect all their clients, which then affects everyone down their software […]

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Fraud Goes Broad

Fraud Goes Broad

The use of analytics to mitigate third-party supply chain fraud, waste, and abuse risk jumped to 35 percent in 2017 from 25.2 percent in 2014,according to a Deloitte poll. Between 2014 and 2017, an average of 30.8 percent of poll respondents report at least one instance of supply chain fraud, waste, and abuse in the […]

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Multi-Stop Steps

Multi-Stop Steps

If you suspect that carriers reject multi-stop truckloads more often than single-stop loads, you’re only partially right. While carriers dislike specific factors about multi-stop, you can employ some strategies to make multi-stop freight more attractive to carriers and better control your costs. Here are four ways shippers can reduce rates and increase acceptance of multi-stop […]

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Valentine’s Day Logistics

$2 billion Amount spent in 2017 on flowers for Valentine’s Day   250 million Number of roses grown specifically for February 14   Colombia, Ecuador, the Netherlands, and Kenya Top four suppliers of roses in the world. Roses don’t grow in the United States in February so they need to be imported from these top […]

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Tracking Trucking

Data scientists at fleet management solutions provider Omnitracs recently conducted some research into what the trucking industry looked like in 2016 vs. 2017. The main findings revolved around Hours of Service (HOS) and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metrics. HOS takeaways, based on data from January to October for 2016 and 2017 Drivers on average drove […]

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Industrial Technology and the Supply Chain: Is 2018 the Year We Turn a Corner?

2017 may be remembered as the year we finally figured it out. After years of spending on the components of industrial technology, professionals in the supply chain and manufacturing disciplines should begin to see the fruits of their investments, as new capabilities and efficiencies begin to surface. 2018 won’t be so much about discovering anything […]

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5 Things to Consider When Choosing an ELD Provider

Now that the ELD Mandate has taken effect, fleet operators and logistics managers have a lot to consider. Many—still around one million—trucks still do not have an ELD (electronic logging device) installed and many fleet operators are still evaluating whether or not to roll the dice and even adhere to the mandate. Those who do […]

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Supply Chain Collaboration: Myth or Reality?

Today’s supply chains are more complex than ever before—that is one of the surest realities of supply chain collaboration. And, due to a lack of collaboration, the supply chain sector is realizing a negative impact resulting from the increased time it takes to make critical decisions. This is why supply chain collaboration (SCC) is such […]

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Predictive Applications Take Supply Chains into the Future

Anything can happen in the supply chain–trucks break down, ships get rerouted, goods are stolen, parts are faulty, ports close, dockworkers go on strike, and supplier production lines go down. This uncertainty causes companies to buffer inventories beyond what is necessary to service forecasted demand just in case something goes wrong. But this is an […]

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4 Common Fees to Monitor for Supply Chain Savings

As logistic departments focus more time and energy on meeting fast order fulfillment, it can become inherently difficult to save money without changing the mix of services used to less premium ones. More often than not, managers are squeezing their network like a tube of toothpaste: getting every last drop out. Take advantage of the […]

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Clinical Trial Supply 2018 Report: The Quest to Shrink Wastage Levels

In meeting the growth ahead for clinical trials there must be a focus on efficiency as their supply already suffers from major issues with wastage levels. This is lack of control is problematic with the rising public scrutiny on spending by pharmaceutical companies. Forecasting and demand planning When sites are under supplied, sponsors may be […]

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Three Transportation Innovations that Can Deliver Short-Term ROI

Managing transportation has become increasingly challenging as customers grow more demanding and the driver shortage constrains capacity. Innovations such as driverless vehicles loom as potential solutions, but have yet to reach commercial viability. That doesn’t mean transportation managers are forced to deal with process inefficiencies and data siloes while they wait for new technologies to […]

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Supply Chain Commentary: Sense, Shape, and Orchestrate Demand

Here’s a quick three-question test for supply chain professionals: Could you pinpoint the location and contents of a single shipment from San Francisco to Tokyo within a few minutes? How quickly would you know if a truck from Los Angeles to Denver had been compromised in a blizzard? If a customer in New Jersey is […]

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Why Adherence to SQF Requirements Is Crucial to Supply Chain Integrity

In early 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized the Safe Quality Food (SQF) rule as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The rule was created to help prevent both intentional and unintentional contamination of the food supply chain from farm to fork. The rule requires those transporting food by motor […]

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Supply Chain Commentary: Satisfying Customer Demand in a 365 E-Commerce Market

Today’s connected world has created catalysts of change from consumer shopping habits all the way to the last mile. Omnichannel retailing, combined with Amazon’s domination of the e-commerce world impacts shippers’ decision-making, driving change throughout the supply chain. This change has been so monumental that the term, Amazon Effect – relating to customer expectations of […]

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China on a Logistics Spending Spree

Chinese companies are acquiring overseas warehousing, trucking, and other logistics service providers in record numbers as part of its goal to build a new Silk Road. Total acquisitions in Europe, Asia, and other regions by Chinese groups of logistics companies more than doubled in the first 11 months of 2017 compared to all of 2016, […]

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