MHI Blog -- With Amazon delivery drones still "years" away, according to a recent interview with CEO Jeff Bezos, Kobi Shikar is offering an alternative idea. Shikar, an industrial design student at Israel’s Shenkar College has unveiled his personal vision for a delivery robot.
His Transwheel robot concept, created as part of his final college project, looks like a robotic unicycle. It is in fact an autonomous robotic wheel with a self- balancing system and electric arms to carry the load. Each robot is equipped with a GPS-driven communication device that allows it to work individually for small parcels or as part of a group of robots when they have to carry a large load together.
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The Wall Street Journal -- The red-hot growth in shipping volumes at some East Coast ports appears to be slowing as the hampering effects of the labor strife that hit West Coast ports earlier this year recede.
Growth in shipping container volumes at the Port of Savannah slowed to 10.3% year-over-year in July, compared with 23.2% in June, according the Georgia Ports Authority.
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Forbes -- A recent University of Tennessee-sponsored survey of leading supply chain executives helped quantify the continued apathy surrounding the proper assessment and management of supply chain risk. For starters, the survey found that none of the companies surveyed use third parties to independently assess their risk, 90 percent don’t even quantify the risk themselves, and while 66 percent acknowledged the existence of corporate officers focused on managing legal compliance, none of these same professionals touched the supply chain.
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Material Handling & Logistics -- "Vision picking" will become a reality in two U.S. warehouses later this year.
Exel, the North American arm of Deutsche Post DHL Group's supply-chain management business, will be testing the method of replacing handheld scanners and paper job orders with wearable "smart-glass" devices outfitted with warehouse management software, as reported by Robbie Whelan on Dow Jones Business News this week.
The technology enables workers to find the fastest route to pick products. It can also read bar codes.
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Manufacturing.net -- New overtime pay rules from the Obama administration could make business management software much more valuable to companies suddenly facing new payroll costs.
The rules, proposed by the Labor Department in June, would raise the salary threshold that exempts managers and other professionals from overtime pay requirements from nearly $24,000 per year to more than $50,000.
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As part of MHI view’s ongoing video program, this new episode focuses on:
Inventory and Network Optimization Tools
Identified as one of the eight emerging technologies that will transform supply chain models in the next decade, inventory and network optimization tools rank as the most widely used and most likely to deliver a competitive advantage. Find out what you should do now to get ahead on this emerging trend.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.
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Rigzone -- A quarter of international oil and gas companies have awarded contracts to suppliers in spite of not having information on their financial standing, according to a survey of supply chain professionals from oil and gas and other industries by global supplier information management company Achilles.
The decline in global oil prices has prompted oil and gas firms to slash spending and cut costs, including layoffs. Many of the workforce reductions taking place are occurring in oil and gas firms’ purchasing and supply chain departments, meaning fewer workers are available to carry out proper validation, prequalification and auditing of their suppliers.
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ABC News -- About one-third of the states have taken action this year to boost funding for transportation or shore up their road and bridge funds against excepted declines in tax revenues. Here's a look at what those states have done.
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EBN -- As drones become more commonplace (or, at least, conversations about them enter more of our collective brain space), the arguments around how, where and when to best use them still are being debated by international regulators, air safety officials and companies.
However, if Amazon plays its cards right, drone superhighways could be part of in our near future, and Europe seems to be positioning itself to be an early adapter of the idea.
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GeekWire -- GeekWire has discovered a "confidential" new Amazon facility that’s getting ready to launch Prime Now one-hour delivery in the Seattle area, as well as a completely new service called "Amazon Flex."
The company hasn’t yet announced the new offering and didn’t respond to questions about how it will work. But signs inside the company’s new Kirkland, Wash., facility indicate Amazon Flex will be a new way for the company to distribute packages, possibly letting customers pick up items from the Prime Now center themselves.
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MHI Blog -- Are you a professional that feels, "I don’t get it" or "I don’t have time" to maintain your Twitter account? If so, you are not alone. The busy professional wants to know how to use Twitter effectively without wasting time online. Some Twitter users want to become well connected and have a lot to share. Others use Twitter more as a valuable information resource. Here are some must-know steps to ensure Twitter is working best for you.
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Progressive Grocer -- On average, $10 million dollars is the cost of a recall on a food company. Add this to the fact that recalls have been doubling every year from the 2002-2014 period in the United States, and it should worry any stakeholder in the manufacturing and processing facilities. Yet many of them are surprisingly optimistic about the chance of a recall affecting business, and it’s their belief of invincibility that leaves them unprepared to weather a storm when one blows up. When manufacturers take a risk on their customers' health, they take a risk on their business’s health.
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FierceRetailIT -- An influx of sensors relating to Internet of Things technology is generating a growing volume of data to feed the predictive supply chain, and informs not only operational decisions, but also helps analyze the behavioral patterns of workers.
Just like the in-store environment, shipper departments now can access a wide array of sensors, applications and data that provides real-time updates on where an item is, as well as the condition of the product—temperature and humidity as it relates to perishables, for example. But it's still people driving the trucks, and their patterns can also be understood, said Andy Souders, senior VP of products and strategy for Savi.
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Material Handling & Logistics -- Earlier this month the American Trucking Association provided its thoughts on FMCSA’s proposed rulemaking addressing missing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards certification labels for commercial motor vehicles operated by U.S.–domiciled motor carriers.
The American Trucking Associations adamantly opposes the implementation of this proposed Commercial Vehicle Certification Label rule for several reasons.
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MHI’s new Career Forum enables manufacturing and supply chain professionals to view current job postings of MHI member companies. Go to http://www.mhi.org/careers to find the perfect opportunity for you.
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EBN -- Globalization is generally understood to be the process through which products, people, ideas, culture, and capital are transferred around the world creating a system of global integration. The general consensus is that this process of integration has created a world that is not only smaller but better. It's also assumed that the global supply chain of the electronics-manufacturing world is highly representative of globalization in action.
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Industry Week -- Manufacturing worldwide is on the cusp of a revolution. New information technologies are suddenly offering not only to make the management of manufacturing more effective, as we saw with early versions of plant and enterprise software, but the work itself smarter. Technologies based on the Internet of Things have the potential to radically improve visibility in manufacturing to the point where each unit of production can be "seen" at each step in the production process. Batch-level visibility is being replaced by unit-level visibility. This is the dawn of smart manufacturing.
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