MHI Blog—MHI is pretty "pumped" to have comedian Dana Carvey headlining MHI Industry Night at ProMat 2017 on April 5 in Chicago. For seven years, Carvey delighted audiences with such characters as the Church Lady and bodybuilder extraordinaire Hans. Carvey excels at impersonation. In fact, President George Bush liked Carvey’s version of him so much that he invited Carvey to perform at the White House Make plans now to attend MHI Industry Night at ProMat 2017.

DCVelocity—Although the supply chain sector employs more than 11 million people and is touted as the new path to the C-suite, the profession suffers from a serious awareness problem. In a bid to change that, MHI has relaunched an awareness campaign designed to promote manufacturing and supply chain as an innovative and rewarding career choice and to change the perception of jobs in the industry. The goal of the #iWorkInTheSupplyChain campaign is to connect, engage, and inspire next-generation workers to pursue manufacturing and supply chain careers.

Global Trade Mag—Consumer products companies have achieved success by capitalizing on growing global demand for consumer products, innovating to keep up with consumer preferences, building iconic brands through marketing and advertising, and generating operational and the supply chain efficiencies. This business model has now come under some stress, according to a report from Alix Partners.

SupplyChainBrain—Company processes are disconnected because their supply chain planning has grown up in a siloed manner, says John Sicard, president and CEO of Kinaxis. Consequently, it's futile to follow that model and think you can optimize the supply chain one link at a time.

MHI Blog—UPS just announced plans to significantly escalate its investment in solar energy. The estimated $18 million investment will allow each building in the initiative to produce half of its daily energy requirement from the sun and provide a nearly five-fold increase in the amount of power generated from solar at UPS facilities. UPS will purchase over 26,000 solar panels during the expansion.

Bloomberg—Brexit has already damaged businesses even before Prime Minister Theresa May triggers the start of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, according to a survey of the country's largest companies.

Multichannel Merchant—The availability of same-day delivery is still catching up with demand as retailers seek new ways to combat Amazon, according to a new study from L2 on the omnichannel fulfillment landscape and customer expectations. This could be an opportunity area for retailers as delivery partners can make same-day a reality across a wider swath of the country than Amazon, which covers 27 U.S. markets at present.

MIT Technology Review—The company that makes robots meant to collaborate with people has just added a ton of features in a big software upgrade.

As part of MHI view's ongoing video program, this new episode focuses on: Transitioning to the Cloud

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

Material Handling & Logistics—A report from Adobe Digital Insights indicates massive sales in e-commerce affected 51% of retailers and importers, indicating a large market opportunity in global e-commerce. The survey shows a need for technology, automation and trade compliance knowledge to provide the infrastructure needed to support this growth.

Reuters—Wal-Mart will combine the buying efforts for its stores and online retail operations to gain efficiencies and lower prices on the e-commerce side, vendors said. The retailer hasn't commented on specific changes, but it's working toward "a more efficient process that accelerates how we bring the full assortment of products in stores to Walmart.com," spokesman Lorenzo Lopez said.

PlasticsNews—Today’s packaging just won’t cut it in the future, an official at a well-known spice and food company believes. As vice president of global sustainability and packaging innovation at McCormick & Co., Michael Okoroafor gets to think about what the future will look like. And he sees the growing electronic commerce trend continuing to impact how future packaging is designed and constructed.

Otto Motors—Industry 4.0 is changing the way products are delivered to the marketplace, forcing manufacturers to quickly adopt new business and revenue models. Typically, products are delivered to customers through a very standardized process. Marketing departments analyze customer demand, forecast sales, and dictate raw material requirements, components and parts needed by production to meet the anticipated capacity. If all goes as planned, the supply and demand gap at every point along the supply chain is a small one. Forecasting, however, remains an inexact science, so this rarely happens.

SupplyChainDigest—Christian Titze, a Gartner analyst, says supply chain traceability is more important than ever but current software lacks maturity and many companies have not adopted third-party solutions. Regulatory requirements, ethical compliance, and security and safety for products at high risk for theft are among key trends driving expansion in traceability.

Progressive Grocer—Wal-Mart, Kroger, H-E-B and ShopRite are among the retailers pulling ahead of the pack when it comes to grocery e-commerce, Randy Hofbauer writes. Wal-Mart will spend $2 billion on e-commerce in the next two years and Kroger has boosted its e-commerce efforts through its ClickList service and its acquisition of Harris Teeter, while H-E-B has expanded its Texas pride and deep customer engagement into the online space, and ShopRite continues to build on its early jump on online sales, pickup and delivery.

Reuters—U.S. states where gasoline taxes have not risen in decades are now discussing an increase and conditions might be ripe for the proposed hikes to win approval in state legislatures, tax experts said this week.

MIT Technology Review—Artificial intelligence could dramatically improve the economy and aspects of everyday life, but we need to invent ways to make sure everyone benefits.

Material Handling & Logistics—The average base salary for supply chain managers is $97,526, according to the MH&L 2017 Salary Survey. This slideshow accompanies Taking Care of Business: MH&L's 2017 Salary Survey, MH&L’s 2017 special report on executive compensation and workforce issues.

PlasticsNews—A new survey says workforce development has shot up the ranking of challenges facing plastics firms in the last five years. Now 92 percent of executives say it’s a top issue. That’s double what it was in 2012, when 45 percent of executives ranked it as a key challenge, according to the 2017 State of the Industry Report from the Indianapolis-based Manufacturers Association for Plastics Processors.

NYTimes—New York City officials and a fashion manufacturing group are trying to reverse a long decline in the city's garment industry by opening 500,000 square feet of space in Brooklyn this year. The partnership has also awarded $1.8 million in grants since 2014 to help companies pay for technological upgrades.

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