MHI Blog -- CBRE recently issued a report, "Global and Emerging Logistics Hubs," that identifies 30 logistics hubs that play a key role regional and global supply chains. The report also points to 20 emerging hubs that may become global hubs over the next decade.
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Forbes -- From plummeting fuel prices to disastrous disruptions, 2015 was an action-packed year across the global supply chain. But it’s time to move on. What about 2016? In the spirit of "everybody has one," I reached out to a number of our industry’s thought leaders, anxious for their opinions and unwilling to let them off the hook without at least one solid prediction. I deliberately stayed away from listing the popular trends and have limited the following summary to the not-so-obvious.
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Industry Today -- The Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) recently released its Quarterly Forecast For U.S. Economic and Manufacturing Growth, discussing the overall outlook for manufacturing and the U.S. economy for the remainder of 2015 and 2016, and highlighting manufacturing’s growth and challenges over a five-year horizon.
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Fortune -- Fleets of drones may one day soar the skies while delivering sneakers, pasta sauce, and basketballs that people order online. But before that happens, specialized air-traffic control systems must be developed to pilot the flying robots and keep them from colliding into each other.
To help create these drone air-traffic control systems, NASA and a group of partners including universities, drone manufacturers, and technology giants like Amazon and Google, are working together to develop the technology that would make such a system possible.
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EBN -- The holiday season, with its fluctuating demand, brings both big opportunity and potential risk for the supply chain.
"At the holiday season, the supply chain is particularly important," said Ken Katz, national property risk control director at Travelers. "Often, it is the most profitable point in time to understand the supply chain since it makes the difference to getting the sale or not. Customers have a compressed wait time, and a competitor is just a click away."
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The Wall Street Journal -- Retailers predict that import volumes at the nation’s major container ports will finish the year on a high note despite weak demand during this year’s traditional peak shipping season.
September’s volume of 1.62 million import containers at the nation’s biggest import gateways was up 2.2% from last year and October’s 1.56 million containers was essentially flat, down 0.1% from the same period in 2014, according to the Global Port Tracker report by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates LLC released Tuesday.
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As part of MHI view's ongoing video program, this new episode focuses on: Adopting Cloud Computing into the Supply Chain.
Mady Bricco, global logistics leader at Dow Chemical, discusses how her company has used cloud computing technology as a massive growth opportunity.
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Material Handling & Logistics -- Driverless trucks represent what those in the industry see as the future of commercial trucking: a future guided by computers rather than by the sentient hands of a driver, a future directed by precision rather than humanity.
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MHI Blog -- A study by Loyola University’s Supply and Value Chain Center, West Monroe Partners and BearingPoint found that more than half (51%) of North American supply chain executives say having a green supply chain is a strategic priority. While an additional 36% plan to address green supply chain in the short-, mid- or long-term, there are still 12% that place no importance on green supply chain.
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Supply Chain Digital -- The global supply chain is ever-changing, affected by fuel prices, new technologies and world disasters. Here are some predictions for 2016.
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Supply Chain Brain -- The number of vessels in the Great Lakes-Seaway system exceeds the five-year average as ships deliver much-needed supplies and make a final push to export grain before the St. Lawrence Seaway closes Dec. 30.
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Material Handling & Logistics -- Good news is around the corner as flat manufacturing production in the fourth quarter of 2015 should give way to 3.3% growth in the first half of 2016.
This is in part because of expected job gains, according to the MAPI Foundation, the research affiliate of the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation.
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Enterprise Apps Today -- The supply chain is getting a lot smarter, thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT). This added intelligence results in lower costs and added efficiency for companies like General Motors and Whirlpool.
Passive sensors in the supply chain are being replaced with more intelligent versions which put companies in a better position to exert more control over the external environment and ultimately execute better decisions, said Noha Tohamy, a Gartner analyst. For example, IoT-enabled factory equipment will be able to transmit temperature and machine utilization parameters, change equipment settings and optimize process workflows to raise overall supply chain performance and efficiency.
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strategy + business -- Nearly two decades ago, just as e-commerce was taking off, a group of players emerged to claim their share of the home-delivery market. Remember Webvan, Urbanfetch, Kozmo, and HomeGrocer? In 2000, in this magazine, we analyzed these and several other startups and found they faced insurmountable hurdles. Limited online sales, high delivery costs, entrenched competitors, and an unacceptable trade-off between speed and variety would combine to doom many of the early home-delivery companies (we called it "the last mile to nowhere"). And in fact, most flamed out in spectacular fashion.
Many of the same challenges persist today, often with added complexities.
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Apparel -- While many people view the holidays as the most wonderful time of the year, this peak season can be far less merry for retailers' supply chains.
Retailers must strategically balance perceived and actual product demand, manage in-stock inventory levels and cash-to-cash cycle, and navigate shifts in the consumer and competitive landscape. Couple these challenges with the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates' prediction of an 8.3 percent November year-over-year increase in shipments, and it's clear why the holidays can be one of the most stressful times of the year for retailers' supply chains.
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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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Logistics Viewpoints -- We are entering an era where it is becoming possible to detect supply chain risks much more quickly.
A case in point is offered by AGCO. AGCO is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of a wide range of agricultural equipment. In a discussion with AGCO’s Jan Theissen, Director of Strategy and Methods, and Jake Stone, Manager of Supply Chain Risk and Contract Management, I learned about this public, Atlanta headquartered corporation’s journey to improve their sourcing and supply base risk management capabilities.
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