,


Articles by

Phil Schmidbauer

Pulling Levers and Finding Value in Transportation

Value is not always easy to measure. It’s the same when discussing transportation costs. Lowest cost is not always the best, as poor quality can cost you much more. Corporate supply chain managers need to understand which levers to pull so they can get the best value for every transportation dollar spent.

CJ Singh

Is the Healthcare Supply Chain Ready for the Netflix Effect?

Have you ever marveled at how Netflix seems to know what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and sets expectations with a high percentage of likelihood that you’ll enjoy their recommendation? What if we could apply that same degree of accuracy to the healthcare supply chain? Armed with the right information, we could know who needs which supplies and when, down to the patient level. The result would be a more resilient supply chain and better patient outcomes.

Keith Biondo

Unleash Short Sea?

The ports around the Great Lakes would love to help offset some of the pain of the horror show called the "shipping crisis." Guess what. They can’t by law. Thank the Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF), a well-intended policy perfect for the 1980s, along with related regulations, for sidelining port capacity around the Great Lakes. The […]

10 Tips for Optimizing Your Routes

This list of tips covers three critical phases: planning (1 to 3), implementation (4 to 7), and program optimization (7 to 10). Each phase calls on different teams to be involved and pursues discrete goals.

Expedited Carriers Guide 2021

In today’s e-commerce-driven supply chains, speed is practically a given. Whether same-day, next-day, two-day, express, expedited, priority, or standard, consumers want their orders fast. That demand has accelerated even quicker during the pandemic, motivating shippers to find ways to optimize transportation to be fast and affordable. To help make sense of the expedited shipping options, […]

Boosting DC Productivity

Faced with increasing e-commerce complexity, distribution centers have to balance flexibility with efficiency. Here are the products, equipment, and systems that streamline DC operations.

Driving Growth Without Boundaries

When Advanced Drainage Systems needed to expand its distribution footprint amid a building boom, DHL Supply Chain helped the company scale its supply chain and position itself for future growth.

How Can Recommerce Benefit Your Supply Chain?

Priorities for global commerce and consumerism continue to evolve, and retail companies are turning to recommerce to reduce their carbon footprint while managing the cost of returns. Recommerce is a fast-growing service focused on reselling problem inventory to extract value from existing products and reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing and transportation. Companies spend an […]

How to Manage Global Specialty Cargo Supply Chains

Not all cargo fits the traditional dock-to-dock standard delivery service. Some loads require specialized equipment and additional labor to perform the delivery and meet the customer’s expectations. Shippers in this situation may overlook the unique experience of a van line carrier, some of which are best known for moving household goods. Van line carriers have […]

IN BRIEF: New Services & Solutions-November 2021

Technology Shippers can get estimated times of arrival (ETAs) for their ocean shipments with FourKites‘ Dynamic ETA for Ocean, a new AI-powered tool in its Dynamic Ocean offering. The tool integrates voyage/routing and captain data with more than 5TB of vessel data and 6 million port-to-port trips across 100,000 lanes worldwide over the past two years. […]

Dashing Through Soaring Holiday Sales

E-commerce holiday sales will grow 11% to 15% in 2021 versus 2020, says Deloitte’s forecast, with e-commerce sales growing 34.8% in November 2020 to January 2021. E-commerce sales will keep growing as consumers continue to buy online across all categories, the report says. Deloitte predicts a 7% to 9% increase in overall holiday sales compared […]

Idaho Sprouts Its First Intermodal Terminal

Pocatello, Idaho, recently welcomed the Savage Rail Port of Southern Idaho, the state’s first intermodal hub, to the area. The new terminal helps local farmers export their goods to global markets. Agricultural products, such as hay and produce, are loaded into shipping containers and brought to the rail yard, where a machine stacks them on […]

Vertical Focus | Sustainable Fashion

Dyeing for Sustainable Denim Researchers from the University of Georgia developed an eco-friendly, non-toxic dyeing technology for denim that could make the textile supply chain significantly more sustainable, as indigo dyeing is a significant source of pollution in the fashion industry. Most indigo is produced synthetically and must be reduced with chemicals. The denim industry […]

Bindu Sundaresan

Best Practices to Protect Supply Chains

With the rapid adoption of cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), the supply chain has many new entry points and attack surfaces for cybercriminals to infiltrate. Implementing these best practices help manufacturers continue to innovate, create new products and services, and increase profitability, while maintaining a competitive edge.

Brenda Stoner

Unlock Potential With Buy Anywhere, Deliver Anywhere

E-commerce sales have surged as a result of the pandemic, forever changing the way consumers shop and receive orders. As a result, shoppers demand faster and more convenient delivery options that get their orders in their hands, when and where they want them.

Young Professionals Remain Positive

About 99% of professionals aged 30 and younger say that working in supply chain is a quality career choice, according to a Penske survey, with 58% pursuing a supply chain career due to its beneficial societal impact delivering essential goods during the pandemic. Key findings from the survey reveal: 95% of young professionals express excitement […]

10 Tips for Managing Inbound Transportation

Whether it’s raw materials or popular holiday products, your primary objective is to get goods to your customers exactly when and where they need them. Here’s how to manage your inbound transportation process.

ERP Makes the Grass Greener

Since its founding more than five decades ago, Lawn Equipment Parts Company (LEPCO), a family-owned wholesale distributor of outdoor power equipment, parts, and accessories, has grown to handle six brands of power equipment and aftermarket parts for more than 1,300 dealers in the northeastern United States. LEPCO is based in Marietta, Pennsylvania.

North American Ports Runneth Over

With consumer confidence increasing and economies opening, goods are moving through North American ports at an unprecedented rate, with imports through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach swelling 41.1% year over year through the first half of 2021 (see chart). Delays continue. Due to pent-up demand, major ports such as New York/New Jersey […]

Powerful Ways Employee Ownership Can Impact Your Business

With labor shortages continuing to rise across the country, the driver shortage in the freight industry looms larger than ever and at Long Haul Trucking we struggle to find high-quality drivers as well. However, we have a silver bullet in that struggle that I want to share with you—employee ownership. Our status as a 100% […]

Keith Biondo

Twinning Your Supply Chain from Google

Google once again is helping to democratize business solutions that were previously available only to the Fortune 1000. Its two new supply chain management solutions—Supply Chain Twin and Supply Chain Pulse—provide a powerful business tool for small and mid-size enterprises. “Siloed and incomplete data is limiting the visibility companies have into their supply chains,” says […]