MHI Blog -- Traditional supply chains will radically change over the next five to 10 years as a result of new technologies, competition and customer demands, according to a new study by MHI and Deloitte that was released during ProMat. On average, companies surveyed expect to invest heavily in new supply chain technologies over the next two years, with the top 17 percent spending over $10 million.

According to the 2015 MHI Annual Industry Report titled "Supply Chain Innovation — Making the impossible possible," firms should embrace this transformation today and focus on investing in new technologies to help compete and thrive as their supply chains continue to face constant pressure to do more with less.

USA Today -- The Federal Aviation Administration is so slow to approve drone permits that the aircraft become obsolete while waiting, an Amazon executive told a Senate panel Tuesday

Paul Misener, vice president of global public policy at Amazon, told the aviation subcommittee that the company was grateful to the FAA for approving an experimental permit Thursday to test potential package deliveries. But the drone had become obsolete during the months-long wait, so the company applied again Friday for a new permit for an updated aircraft.

Material Handling & Logistics -- Attending a material handling trade show like ProMat 2015, attendees will naturally be focused on emerging technologies, so it had to be some comfort to those confounded by the plethora of new stuff that even the experts sometimes find it hard to wrap their minds around it all. Certainly, when it comes to tech legends, it’s hard to think of somebody more influential than Steve "The Woz" Wozniak, creator of the Apple personal computer, a recent inductee into the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Hall of Fame, founder of Wheels of Zeus, and one whose lifelong ambition was to be considered an "engineer’s engineer."

MHI Blog -- MHI announced the MHI 2015 Innovation and Young Professional Award winners last night at their 70th Anniversary Celebration during ProMat 2015.

EBN -- There's lots of noise these last few years about companies bringing back some of their manufacturing to North America. Cheaper energy options, better on-time delivery, and increasing wages in countries labeled low-cost have been cited as the main motivating factors.

What kind of impact this is really having on the U.S. economy is up for debate, with some organizations and news agencies now discussing that the reshoring trend is less significant to the economy than it originally seemed.

Logistics Viewpoints -- There is more than one way to skin a cat. And the fat cat at ProMat is the high-volume of small, multi-line item orders being fulfilled by today’s distribution operations. ProMat 2015 has 808 exhibitors (and 35,000 attendees), so It’s difficult to boil down such a large and diverse set of offerings to one concept, but the changing fulfillment requirements driven by e-commerce is the closest thing to it.

CNBC -- Five years ago, "flash sale" start-ups introduced a new business model into the retail ecosystem: high-end goods, in limited supply, at affordable prices. Led by Gilt Group, Rue La La, and Zulily, these companies played to consumers growing tendency and desire, to impulse buy and changed the way millions of consumers shop on a daily basis.

However, many failed to build long-term loyalty form their user base. If you were a member of one flash-sale site, you were most likely a member of many others. This lack of loyalty forced them to compete on price and product diversity as more players entered the market.

MHI Blog -- Having just returned from the ProMat 2015 trade show, where leaders in the material handling, logistics equipment and technologies industry gathered, it’s worth recapping some of the most significant current and emerging trends impacting the business landscape.

Supply Chain Management Review -- When assessing areas of risk facing their departments, nearly half (45%) of Chief Procurement Officers named supplier risk as a top concern, according to a new survey by Consero Group.

The results were reported as part of the 2015 Global Procurement & Strategic Sourcing Data Survey, compiled by Consero Group.

Supply Management -- Shipping losses worldwide have declined by 50 per cent over the past decade, but 75 ships were lost in 2014, according to a study.

A report published by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) found more than a third of 2014’s total losses took place in two maritime regions: South China, Indo China, Indonesia and the Philippines, with 17 ships lost; and Japan, Korea and North China, with 12 ships lost.

Modern Materials Handling -- The results of the 2015 MHI Annual Industry Report were released at Wednesday’s ProMat keynote, with some of the biggest findings from the report’s survey being pricing pressure combined with ever growing customer expectations for a faster, better experience.

Supply Chain Brain -- We've had a few weeks to assess the impact on shippers of FedEx and UPS's adoption of dimensional weight pricing for all ground packages. What's the picture look like now? The two parcel-handling giants implemented dimensional weight pricing at the beginning of this year, for ground packages under three cubic feet in size. (Larger boxes, as well as air shipments, were already being priced on that basis.)

Supply Management -- New UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be unveiled in September to offer firms the opportunity to improve their performance and the societies in which they operate, a conference was told.

Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact, said the public and private realms were blurring and so companies had to take responsibility for factors, such as air quality and water scarcity, once considered "externalities".

Forbes -- There is a rarely litigated – but often irritating – antitrust and distribution law known as the Robinson-Patman Act. The Act prohibits sellers from setting different prices for competing purchasers of like commodities, except when justified based on differences in volumes or cost of sale.

In short, if a large supplier is selling the same product to Sam’s Club and a small grocer, the manufacturer may legitimately offer a lower cost to Sam’s Club if they can show that because the giant retailer orders in truckload quantities, they have lower transportation and production costs associated with serving Sam’s.

Modern Materials Handling -- During Wednesday’s afternoon keynote address, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, affectionately known as "The Woz," suggested the future of technology now is every bit as uncertain to him as it was 30 years ago.

EBN -- Is the onshoring trend more hype than substance?

Exactly a year has passed since my six-part series on the top 10 compelling reasons fueling the onshoring trend. As I pointed out then, we are still a long way from a manufacturing Renaissance in the United States. However, the undeniable influx of jobs brought back from China and other offshoring hot spots gives us reason to hope the bleeding has at least slowed if not come to an end. At the same time, based on the flurry of media stories extolling the virtues of American manufacturing, it's easy to get carried away.

Supply Chain Management Review -- At last year’s Modex, I wrote that "it’s all about the software." I may sound a little like a broken record here, but I just came back from ProMat 2015 in Chicago. And, while there was plenty of exciting mechanical equipment on display, including Opex’s goods-to-person picking solution, shuttles and robots at Dematic and Intelligrated, a new AGV at JBT and a fully-automated octopus stretch wrapper at Muller, the real talk was software.

Why? Because increasingly the hardware is just a means to an end: If you spent any time at the booths of our leading systems integrators what’s clear is that the software is what makes our increasingly complex order fulfillment processes possible. Perhaps, the industry is about to take a page from Apple’s playbook, pairing elegant products with superb software.

Property Casualty 360 -- What do Norway, Qatar and Finland have in common? They’re ranked among the top 10 countries that are most resilient to business supply chain disruption, according to the 2015 FM Global Resilience Index, issued today by business property insurer FM Global, headquartered in Johnston, R.I. Tajikistan, Mauritania and Venezuela rank in the bottom 10 of countries least resilient to business supply chain disruption.