Joseph A. Sedlak, industry pioneer and founder of Sedlak Management Consultants Inc., passed away on September 9th at age 90

 

Finding a qualified manufacturing and supply chain workforce is becoming more and more of a challenge. An investment in students today will help to create a talent pool for the future. A great way to make this investment is a donation to The Material Handling Education Foundation, Inc. (MHEFI) to fund scholarships supporting the study of material handling, logistics and the supply chain.

 

Apple has announced plans to open a manufacturing plant in Mesa, Ariz., creating more than 2,000 jobs and part of an effort to bring some manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

 

In January of this year, Walmart pledged to buy an additional $50 billion in U.S. products over the next 10 years. Through their buying power, Walmart is giving manufacturers confidence to invest capital in the U.S. and play a role in revitalizing the ecoomy.

 

The air may be getting cleaner in Legoland. The Lego Group, in partnership with the WWF environmental organization, has agreed to work with suppliers on cutting carbon emissions from its supply chain. The Danish toy maker said it would join the WWF’s Climate Savers Program and, next year, start test projects with suppliers to find carbon emissions-reducing solutions.

 

by Chris Jenkinson

Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: You’ve got an important software endeavor, you compile your requirements, you hand them off to a developer or project manager, and months later you get a monolithic application. If you’re lucky, it was on time, on budget, and met your needs, but according to the 2013 CHAOS Manifesto from The Standish Group, only 39 percent of surveyed software projects in 2012 met those standards. Forty-three percent of projects were late, over-budget, or missing features. Eighteen percent were cancelled outright and never used.

 

The products we use everyday come to us in all different types of packaging. For example, you buy cookies and crackers in boxes from the supermarket. But, if you purchase them from a vending machine, they will come in a small pouch. The manufacturers of these goods don't always want to invest in all of the different equipment needed to make the wide variety of packaging for their products, so they hire companies like Ryder to do it for them.

 

by Tom Rentschler

Prior to the "dot com" bubble bursting more than ten years ago, being a "first mover" was considered an unassailable advantage. But over the last decade or more we have seen countless examples of "fast followers," or second movers if you will, prevailing against the original innovators in countless categories. Witness Samsung’s ability to continue to erode Apple’s dominant share in Smartphone’s as the latest high-profile example of a very rapid follower achieving new levels of success.

 

The U.S. Department of Defense has issued an interim rule allowing the agency to consider supply chain risk in certain procurements related to national security systems, citing an "urgent need" to protect such programs from sabotage.

 

by Derek Sorensen

Arriving early for a party at a friend's house, you offer to help the harried host - by offering to unload the dishwasher and straighten up the kitchen. They demur; you insist. Springing to the task, you immediately realize you don't know where everything goes, and your friend must continuously advise you where to store the mixing bowls, glassware, heavy cast iron skillet, oddball gadgets and so on. Over time, your friend has slotted every item in the kitchen to optimize their productivity and maximize limited storage capacity. They have attained labored space efficiency (at least temporarily), which is precisely the goal in managing your DC operation.

 

A new study provides more evidence of growing high-tech company interest in nearshoring of manufacturing operations, although a large majority of businesses surveyed across the globe don’t plan to shift to factories closer to home.