Articles
Logistics
4 Ways to Ensure Your Valuable Shipments Arrive Safely
Every shipment contains something of value to the sender and receiver. That package may have an extraordinarily high monetary value with little emotional equity, or incredibly high emotional value for the recipient but little financial worth. For example, let’s take a shipment containing temperature- or time-sensitive pharmaceuticals for patients in a new drug trial. The […]
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Ready to Reduce Your Footprint? Start by Taking These 5 Steps
For resource-intensive organizations, conservation and environmental initiatives are more than feel-good activities. Environmental stewardship can ease regulatory and compliance burdens, reduce effort and waste, and increase profit margins. Yet, many companies still struggle to justify green efforts. Implementing an environmental initiative in your business can be more than just an exercise in sustainability. The program […]
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Benchmarking Transportation Processes With TMS Data
Many businesses that ship products use transportation management systems (TMS) for visibility and control within their supply chain operations. The introduction of cloud-based TMS has also opened the door to many small and mid-sized companies to find great tools that fit their budgets. While using TMS capabilities to support everything from carrier rate management, shipment […]
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Start Now to Leverage the Benefits of the Panama Canal Expansion
The expansion of the Panama Canal, scheduled between late 2015 and early 2016, is one of the most important infrastructure projects of the past century. The upgrades mean that massive post-Panamax ships will traverse the waterway, leading to a significant shift in trade patterns and increased global trade. Global companies typically grow 15 percent faster, […]
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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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The Shape of ‘Things’ to Come
What the Internet of Things means for the supply chain—now and in the future.
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Turning Back the Pages: 20 Years of Top 100 3PLs
Where were you in 1996? Working your way up the transportation ladder? Starting a career in the logistics field? On the outside looking in? Still in high school? Grade school? Every once in a while it’s fun to throw it back—to an earlier time and reflect on where we come from, where we’ve been, cause […]
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Going Beyond the Call of Duty
When our nation’s heroes transition from active service to the private sector, logistics companies enlist them in long-term, successful careers.
Read MoreOvercoming LTL Shipping Challenges
Less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation involves moving shipments that won’t fill a 48- or 53-foot semi-trailer. LTL could be half of a full shipment, a single pallet, or a single box. LTL shipping creates many challenges, and understanding how to overcome them is key to efficiency. Adam Robinson, marketing manager of third-party logistics (3PL) provider Cerasis Inc., […]
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Terri Anderson: Care and Feeding of the WMS
Terri Anderson is production warehouse management systems manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a global learning company specializing in Pre-K to 12th grade content, services, and technology. She has held this position, based in Indianapolis, since 2004. Responsibilities: Configure, enhance, and test the company’s warehouse management system (WMS); liaison between distribution centers and the technology group; […]
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Readers’ Choice Top 10 3PL Excellence Awards 2015
3PLs have the tools, people, knowledge, and experience to help supply chains run more efficiently. Which 3PLs did our readers vote the best of the best?
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Trends—July 2015
ShippingPass vs. Prime: The Fight for Last-Mile Rights Walmart and Amazon are a study in contrasts, from corporate culture to omni-channel strategy. One promises everyday low prices; the other prioritizes selection and speed. But all things being different, they are chasing the same thing—customer satisfaction. Both retail leaders have found a common battleground when it […]
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Supply Chain Visibility: Chasing the Big Picture
As technology brings supply chain data into focus, the ability to access and interpret business information moves from nice-to-have to must-have.
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Inventory Replenishment: Why Push When You Can Pull?
Today‘s supply chains are undergoing significant pressures to become more demand-driven. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers must choose the approach they hope will make the most profit. Should you produce goods according to demand forecasts, or by reacting to what consumers already bought? Companies are investing in a new generation of cloud technologies that enable the […]
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G75: Inbound Logistics’ 75 Green Supply Chain Partners
If you want your carbon footprint to be as small as possible, and your business to be sustainable, then make sure you are doing business with supply chain partners who feel the same way. Inbound Logistics’ annual 75 Green Supply Chain Partners (G75) focuses on showcasing companies that demonstrate green best practices in their supply chain, […]
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Kelvin Miller: Home Away From Home for the Troops
Kelvin Miller is an equipment and mobility readiness spare parts allocation supervisor with military contractor DynCorp International, in Dohar, Qatar. He has held this position since 2013. Responsibilities: Managing and shipping equipment to the field to support Air Force deployments in the Middle East. Experience: Section chief, materiel distribution, U.S. Air Force. Education: A.A., psychology, […]
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Global Logistics-June 2015
GCC States Warm to Regional Collaboration Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states —Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain—have long been hamstrung by independent-minded sovereigns who prefer to think and act unilaterally. Despite the formation of the trade bloc in 1981, collaboration, especially around transportation and logistics, often goes wanting. It’s why […]
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Trends—June 2015
Highway Trust Funding: Déjà vu All Over Again? News that U.S. Congress and President Obama are about to finalize a two-month extension to the lame duck Highway Trust Fund has elicited mixed reaction from industry. Some are optimistic because legislators were able to push through a bill without undue delay, especially as summer construction work […]
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How to Cut Seven Non-Traditional Wastes
In my first column for Inbound Logistics in 2012, I covered the seven traditional wastes identified in Lean thinking: Transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing, and defects, more commonly known by the acronym TIM WOOD. But there are other wastes to consider in your supply chain and logistics functions. Let’s examine the following seven non-traditional […]
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