Innovation. At times it seems like a buzzword that, like AI, every organization defines in its own way. Yet, it goes hand in hand with digital transformation and has become a muscle that every supply chain organization that I can think of wants to develop. One of the things I’ve noticed over the last three or four years is how much supply chain innovation is happening in the 3PL industry. More importantly, just how willing 3PL’s are to talk about it. That makes sense. At most companies, supply chain is a business process; at 3PLs, it’s the whole business. If…
I spent last week in Orlando at the Gartner Supply Chain Symposium. If you’ve never attended, think of it as Lollapalooza for senior level supply chain executives: It’s an event where what we do every day out of the limelight is celebrated in the limelight. This year, digital transformation was a big part of the conversation. That’s a topic I had the opportunity to explore with supply chain leaders from Maersk and Colgate that I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks. But first, Gartner is also a place to understand the trends that are impacting supply chain leaders today.…
The challenges faced by supply chains during and following the pandemic have been repeated so often as to be cliché. What’s less discussed is that whatever you may think of the economy, manufacturing and distribution are exceeding pre-COVID levels and operations are back to normal. Sure, there are occasional hiccups from a late shipment, staffing issues, or an extreme weather event, but now those events are minor blips and not seizures. At Kimberly-Clark, “it’s a reset moment.” That’s the way Scott DeGroot, the CPG giant’s vice president of global logistics, puts it. As a maker of paper-based personal products like…
I had a fascinating conversation with Brett Wood, the president and CEO of Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA). Wood noted that if you based your view of the economy on television news, you’d think we’re in the doldrums. Now, the long-predicted recession may be coming – we’ve never had this many consecutive years of growth without a downturn in the past – but the numbers that relate to industry are pretty darn good. In Wood’s own corner of the industrial and material handling community, these are the best of times. He noted that the industry sold a combined total…
In the Monday before Thanksgiving, Kevin Kuntz, the head of supply chain for Gap Inc., was in his office at the specialty retailer’s distribution center in Gallatin, Tenn. Asked how things were shaping up for Black Friday, Kuntz said inventory was flowing through the network just as it should. His team was ready to fill online orders and replenish as needed. After two crazy years, he said: “It feels like a normal peak season.” One big reason for Kuntz’s confidence, and the future of Gap Inc.’s fulfillment strategy, is a new facility that opened last summer in Longview, Texas. At…
Listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts. Back in the day, we thought really big. Think the Great Wall of China, the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal. Byron Bennett, CEO of Zergratran, thinks it’s time to think big again. In fact, he’s proposing a big, hairy audacious project in Colombia to compete with the Panama Canal. On this episode of Talking Supply Chain, Bennett describes his proposal for a tunnel under Colombia that will connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Using electic, linear induction propulsion-based technology the project will transport containers from one ocean to the next…
早在2013年,Medline和Swisslog构成me the first company in the United States to implement a robotic goods-to-person solution from AutoStore. The original site was a 600,000-square-foot distribution center north of Chicago in Libertyville, Ill. That first implementation, featured in the June 2015 issue of Modern, sported 43 bots in a relatively small area plus four goods-to-person workstations. The bots managed 27,570 totes across 37,750 storage locations with throughput of up to 12,500 lines per day. It was a bold move at the time, but even then, Medline was embracing high levels of automation technologies across its…
A few days before Christmas, Abe Eshkenazi, the CEO of the Association for Supply Chain Management and I recorded our last episode of The Rebound Podcast for 2022. Looking back, our conclusion was that 2022 was the year supply chains stabilized. 2023 will be the year we transition to what comes next. And, I think we agree that now is the most exciting time of our careers to be part of the supply chain industry. 2023 will also be a transition year for me and Supply Chain Management Review. After nearly 10 years at the magazine’s helm—my first issue was…
In its most recently-released sustainability report, one of the leaders in the production of fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables is making big strides on its sustainability goals. This is the second of two articles looking at sustainability in the supply chain. The first detailed Walmart’s Purchase Power Agreement with Schneider Electric to make sources of renewable energy available to 5 of Walmart’s suppliers. Just a few years ago, MIT professor and supply chain thought leader Yossi Sheffi published Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To), a provacative book that looked at the state…
这是两篇系列文章中的第一篇看sustainability in the supply chain. The second looks at the progress being made by Fresh Del Monte in a vertically-integrated agricultural supply chain. Way back in 2006, I wrote for Diversity Inc. magazine, a publication that covered the then emerging fields of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, supplier diversity and sustainability, all rolled up under the corporate responsibility umbrella. One of my early interviews was with Esther Silver-Parker, who was then the senior vice president of diversity relations at Walmart, and is now the CEO of the SilverParker Group, a consultancy specializing…
Diageo, the global leader in premium drinks, is transforming its supply chain to meet the future. When you’re a global leader in spirits and beer, with sales of nearly $17 billion for the last financial year, a portfolio of brands which spans the spectrum of tastes and occasions, including Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Tanqueray and Don Julio, and expanding sales (net sales were up more than 20% in the last fiscal year), where and how do you invest in your supply chain to maintain a market leading advantage? Just as important, how do you do so when consumer tastes in…
Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on American Eagle Outfitters’ (AEO Inc.) new approach to retail and e-tail fulfillment. Part 1 looked at AEO’s facilities; in Part 2 we look at its shared network. Many of us think of e-fulfillment as an inside game. The focus is on having the right assortment of inventory in a facility, complemented by highly automated systems and robotics that can process orders at record speeds and on the fly. But what’s also becoming increasingly clear is that it’s possible to win at the inside game and still lose the customer…