The Technology Issue: Cutting through the noise

Like you, I’ve sat in conference sessions and have freely tossed around the latest concepts and acronyms over cocktails at the networking events. It’s only natural to fear being left behind these days, especially when it comes to grasping the capabilities of the latest technology. However, as we sift through all of this noise, we often forget to examine how these new innovations can be realistically applied in our operations.

With that in mind, the job of the editorial staff of Logistics Management is to put context around the possibilities a new concept or technology can bring to the market, yet keep our feet firmly planted in reality—and I believe that’s what we offer in our 2018 Technology Issue.

I’m also happy to report that I’m not alone in this crawl, walk, run mode of thinking. In fact, every year when I contact potential analysts to take part in our Technology Roundtable, nearly all of them suggest that we stick to the fundamentals and then go through some evolutionary scenarios outlining where the buzz may take us.

Interestingly, when I ask analysts what they believe should be top of mind in terms of technology adoption, I never hear the same answer twice.

Starting on page 38, MIT’s Ken Cottrill offers us one of the most fundamental explanations of blockchain to date; CapGemini’s Joe Vernon let’s us know where we really stand in terms supply chain visibility and last-mile management; St. Onge’s Norm Saenz gives us some tactical automated solution suggestions inside our warehouse/DC operations; and then Gartner’s Dwight Klappich checks in on the state of autonomous mobile robots, a market that he believes has arrived.

After you’ve read this year’s roundtable, I suggest you join our panelists in our2018 Technology Roundtablewebcast that I’ll be moderating on Thursday, May 17 at 2:00 p.m. ET. This 45 minute session features this year’s group going deeper into their answers before rolling into a Q&A session where we’ll be fielding your questions in real time.

And while our panel does an excellent job of establishing the fundamentals of some of the buzz terms, contributing editor Roberto Michel’s cover story (page 28) does an equally terrific job of pulling all of the elements together, setting a course for starting down the digital transformation path.

“We’re all hearing that there’s belief in the benefit of digital supply chains,” says Michel. “But with so many technology tools in the mix, it’s increasingly difficult to figure out where to start. I believe what we’ve reported in this issue just may give shippers the impetus to pinpoint a problem they want to solve, and then at least start to crawl.”