MHI Blog -- Market opportunities, the search for talent and business disruption concerns top the priority list when determining where to set up or expand facilities.

A new report by Deloitte and the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI), "Footprint 2020: Expansion and optimization approaches for U.S. manufacturers," examines the trends driving global manufacturing footprint shifts and explores the next generation of locations manufacturers are considering.

PC World -- Google, Amazon and Wal-Mart have joined the government's task force charged with figuring out a registration and identification system for drones.

The companies, all three of which are working on drone delivery systems, are among 25 members that have been asked to formulate recommendations by Nov. 20 on how such a registration system would work and what types of drones should be exempt. Their work will begin with a three-day meeting next week.

The April opening of Panama’s $5.3 billion expanded canal, originally set for 2014, could be delayed further depending on repairs to leaks discovered in the new locks during testing as the waterway ends a year of record shipments, administrator Jorge Quijano said.

The contractor building the new locks is expected to file a report within the next three weeks on the repair time line and any delay in the opening "shouldn’t be much if there is one," Quijano said in a phone interview on Thursday. Shipments through the canal could rise to 360 million tons in 2017, the first full year of the expanded canal’s operation, after reaching a record 340.8 million tons in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, he said.

The New York Times -- The House on Tuesday passed legislation that would give railroads an additional three years to install technology intended to prevent train crashes, potentially averting major disruptions in the nation’s freight and commuter rail systems.

The rail industry and its customers have long sought an extension to the year-end deadline to install the safety system, called positive train control, on more than 60,000 miles of track. A Government Accountability Office report in September found that the industry would not be able to meet the deadline because of several problems, including a limited number of suppliers of the new technology. The office recommended that Congress extend the deadline.

Modern Materials Handling -- "Our DC gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace and is considered a strategic asset," says Chris Halkyard, former chief supply chain officer for the Gilt Groupe.

If you’ve spent any time in distribution centers lately, you know a fundamental shift is underway in how DCs are designed and the purposes they serve. In the not-so-distant past, a DC was a cost of doing business and a necessary evil. For the most part, they were places to store inventory until it was shipped on to the next stop along the way. Success for DC managers was measured by how much they could reduce the cost of handling a pallet or carton.

Reuters -- U.S. economic growth braked sharply in the third quarter as businesses cut back on restocking warehouses to work off an inventory glut, but solid domestic demand could encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in December.

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.5 percent annual rate after expanding at a 3.9 percent clip in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

With the days falling off the calendar leading up to the holiday season, the ongoing influence and emergence of e-commerce on supply chain management shows no signs of stopping.

That was a major takeaway of a keynote speech given by Henry Maier, president and CEO of FedEx Ground at the University of Rhode Island’s Supply Chain Management Forum earlier this week.

Industry Week -- The conventional wisdom holds that robots ultimately cost the jobs of the human beings they replace, and lead to an overall decline in manufacturing employment.

In a globalized economy, however, using robots might be one of the best ways for U.S. manufacturing jobs to live, thrive and survive.

Chain Store Age -- Current retail planning systems may be out-of-date and not effectively addressing requirements for an omnichannel planning environment.

According to the new Boston Retail Partners’ 2015 Merchandise Planning Benchmark Survey, many retailers are using planning applications designed for old retail business models. Results show a large percentage of these systems were installed in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Warehouses and distribution centers are undergoing a quiet revolution in the adoption of advanced technologies. The warehouse is on the trajectory to implement many of the capabilities sought in the vision of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). eCommerce is has been a driver in this sector as companies such as Amazon, Walgreens, and LL Bean are seeking out solutions that are robust, high speed, and have little labor content. The margin pressure in the retail sector is placing incredible demands on operations to reduce labor content, increase production output, and reduce warehousing space. Innovations abound in the warehouse today with the wide use of automated and semi-automated systems used to track, retrieve and store goods.

Orders for long-lasting manufactured goods fell in September, with a key category that tracks business investment plans declining for a second straight month.

Orders for durable goods dropped 1.2% in September, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That follows a 3% drop in August, an even bigger downturn than first reported.

MHI Blog -- MHI view just released a new video on motion sensitive, interactive automation in supply chains and the tech-savvy workers that utilize these solutions.

In the video, Markus Schmidt, senior vice president of Swisslog North America and Corey Ryan, manager of Medical Robotics at Kuka Robotics Corporation discuss the new wave of motion sensitive, collaborative robots and the unique opportunities they provide supply chains and their employees

Manufacturing Business Technology - What if your yard management system (YMS) played like a video game? You open the gaming window and see orders ready-to-ship, as they are located in the yard. Each stack in the yard is color-coded by filters you select. Green means ready to ship. Yellow is pending. Red represents tomorrow's orders. A click on any illustration opens the content details in a sidebar.

Suddenly, a trailer enters the yard from the edge of the screen, identified by an RFID reader at the gate. Its status is flashing, so you know you have some maintenance to perform — a broken door hinge perhaps. You click and drag the trailer to the maintenance bay, automatically sending an order to the driver and the maintenance team, alerting each of their assigned tasks as reported by onboard sensors.