Articles
Supply Chain Management
Controlling Your Own Destiny: Why Shippers Must Find Ways to Ensure Supply Chain Resiliency
The challenge with today’s supply chain is that one glitch, at any mile, can impact the entire chain.
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What’s the most significant way COVID-19 has changed the supply chain?
The pandemic has increased uncertainty to a level never seen before in supply chains. Demand patterns are all over the place, supply lines are disrupted, lead times are uncertain, and nobody is quite sure when and how things will change going forward. Supply chain planning? More like supply chain prognosticating!
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3 M’s to Cut Supply Chain Costs
As the global supply chain settles into the COVID-19 technology-driven and customer-centric decade, there’s no time to pause and reflect on what has happened. Now is a time for action. Pick up the pace and ensure your processes are leaner and faster, and you are equipped to meet your customers’ expectations.
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Addressing Shippers’ Top Concerns
Due to the current uncertainty of the global economy, shippers are experiencing new, unique challenges. As they navigate these challenges, understanding the shifts in consumer behavior and how they impact their supply chain is critical.
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Project Logistics: Doing the Heavy Lifting
The professionals behind special logistics projects need to attend to details, prepare for problems, and focus on the big picture.
Read MoreTaking Up Space
Mark Wiese works at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida as manager of the deep space logistics Gateway program. Responsibilities: Provides project management expertise and strategic vision for spacecrafts, launch vehicles, and integration services to advance NASA’s Gateway lunar orbiting platform. Oversees integration of commercial logistics missions to the Gateway. Experience: Management, logistics, and […]
Read MoreIN BRIEF: New Services & Solutions-August 2020
Products Safe Load Testing Technologies’ new Tilt Testing Tool evaluates load stability for over-the-road transportation. Detachable for easy handling, the tool lets shippers validate a load’s stability by tilting it. Shippers who want to remove lithium-ion powered recorders and trackers from their loads due to safety concerns have a new option with the Tive Solo 5G Non Lithium-Ion […]
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Setting Up a Successful RFP
Managing a Request for Proposal (RFP) process can be daunting. Prequalify respondents, then keep things focused for the best results. Q: How do I extend invitations to the most qualified providers? A: The most qualified providers will reveal themselves through a Request for Information (RFI) process or reference. Preceding the Request for Proposal with an […]
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 […]
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How Will the Future Unfold?
As the coronavirus continues to disrupt global supply chains, Gartner developed three scenarios to help chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) prepare for recovery and make preemptive decisions to set up their organizations for success. Gartner polled 833 IT and IT/business professionals and found that 84% of organizations are facing varying forms of disruption—from slight disruptions […]
Read MoreMore Companies Seek Sustainability Data
An uptick of 24% more companies are asking their suppliers to report environmental data in 2020 through nonprofit CDP Global, with a 34% surge of growth in North America. Suppliers report data on their impacts, risks, opportunities, and strategies related to climate change, deforestation, and/or water security through CDP’s platform. Companies then use the data […]
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Make a New Plan, Stan
More than half of surveyed industry professionals say their supply chain planning process is only “somewhat effective,” regardless of the technology used, finds new research by AIMMS. A combined 28% state that their planning process is “very effective” or “extremely effective,” while 15% say their process is “not so effective,” and 2% say it is […]
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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.
Read MoreThe True Value of Supply Chain Transformation
Lyndsi Lee is senior vice president of supply chain with True Value Company, a leading hardware and home improvement wholesaler. Responsibilities: Drive end-to-end supply chain optimization, develop integrated planning and logistics strategies, and build best-in-class sourcing programs. Experience: Division vice president, inventory management and global sourcing, also with True Value; principal, project leader, Boston Consulting […]
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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 […]
Read MoreHow Mobile IoT Brings End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility to Life
End-to-end supply chain transparency has proven a difficult-to-attain gold standard, not only by transportation and logistics companies, but by any company that depends on the movement of goods to propel business forward. In the thick of the COVID-19 era and its ripple effects, this need has become even more critical across nearly every sector. The […]
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COVID-19 Supply Chain Resources & Recovery Strategies
3 Innovations on the Fast Track 1. Delivery drones. Their deployment has been fast tracked to reduce the risk of exposure for drivers and bolster capacity to meet soaring demand for home deliveries. For example, UPS and CVS plan to use drones to deliver prescription medications to a Florida retirement community. Alphabet’s drone delivery company, […]
Read MoreThe Value of Global Trade Insights in Navigating COVID-19 Supply Chain Disruptions
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fragility of the modern supply chain, as companies struggle to acquire the products and raw materials needed to keep revenue flowing. With many businesses relying heavily on a limited number of trading partners, many located in hard-hit areas like China, the scale of the supply chain disruption has been […]
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