After 18 months of discussions, research, writing and editing, The U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics has been released. Published on www.MHLroadmap.org, the 67-page report and action plan is designed to help industry determine how logistics and supply chain trends and challenges can be turned into action plans to develop needed capabilities in the U.S. between now and 2025.

The report’s content is based on input from more than 100 thought leaders, including material handling and logistics practitioners, suppliers, academia, associations, government and media—including Material Handling & Logistics magazine.

This is a tough time to be in the international freight business.

The U.S. and global economy might well be on the mend, but the market remains weak for ocean and air carriers. Even some seemingly positive statistics about rising confidence in the freight-forwarding sector come with qualifications.

Innovation is about a lot of different things. Partly it's about flexible thinking, being creative. Partly it's about taking risk.

One thing that often gets overlooked in innovation is raw spending power. If you put money into R&D, the odds are that you are going to be a little bit more innovative than the next company.

This year, MODEX features three keynote presentations, each offering critical insights from experts into shipping trends, building successful supply chains, and the latest issues and trends in materials handling and logistics.

Elemica, a supply chain operating network provider for the process industries, discusses 10 top initiatives for 2014 that companies are deploying in their supply chains to help increase business performance.

These initiatives have been captured from Fortune 500 client input, analyst engagement, product management insight, and across Elemica’s leadership team with years of experience and expertise in the supply chain industry. Suggestions cover collaboration, visibility, outside-in approaches, sustainability, response time and more.

Coming up with New Year’s resolutions is a popular tradition in many parts of the world. Usually, the focus is on improving our personal lives, such as losing weight, quitting smoking, or spending more time with our family and friends. But what about resolutions to help us improve at work?

If you’re a supply chain or logistics executive and you’re looking for ways to improve as a leader this year, here are my five recommendations.

The first law of forecasting is that forecasts are always wrong. The important thing is to understand how wrong the forecast is, and how to improve the accuracy to a point where realistic planning can be achieved. 

The development of IT systems that can measure and manage every metric in the supply chain has opened the way to better forecasting. But, it would be a mistake to think that IT alone is the solution, according to Oliver Wight partner, Liam Harrington. 

Global logistics and trade executives are more enthusiastic about the business opportunities to be found in emerging markets than they are concerned about the political and economic turmoil found in these places, according to results of a survey of more than 800 industry executives as reported in the fifth annual Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index. 

Seventy-four percent of logistics professionals view prospects for emerging markets as "good" or "very good" for 2014, despite signs that growth is slowing in China, stalled in Brazil and India, and uncertain in other countries that could suffer if the United States reins in monetary stimulus, as expected.

Mobile devices have moved to the center of creating value in enterprises of all shapes and sizes. Warehouses, hospitals, manufacturing firms, the food processors and a host of others depend as much on mobile devices today as the transportation and logistics employee bringing an online purchase to your door. Many of these industries use purpose-built devices with proprietary information and software on them. The combination has become an essential business tool for many organizations.

Surveys conducted by McKinsey and Company indicate that supply chain management is becoming a higher priority in boardrooms at the same time the job is becoming more challenging and complex. McKinsey Principal Yogesh Malik identifies issues for supply chain managers to address now and trends to watch.

 

Corporate executives are raising the priority of supply chain management and expecting it to deliver more than cost savings, says Malik. "Company leaders are looking at the supply chain not only as a tool to reduce costs but as a means to improve service levels and create competitive advantage," he says. 

Trends often come and go before you notice them. Flexible packaging trends seem to have a longer life span than most, signaling that the format is here to stay. Here are some recent and developing trends we’re monitoring.

The vertically integrated supply chain model borne from the manufacturing industries of the 20th century has long been recognized as a creature of very different economic and cultural conditions. In fact, the concept of supply chain management didn’t take hold in the U.S. until the mid-1990s, and logistics wasn’t defined as a profession by the Department of Labor until 2000.

Today, open market conditions, a climate of international free trade, and the ever-evolving integrated global economy offer manufacturers broader access to materials as well as other dynamics of production. 

For years, warehouse management system (WMS) suppliers have been introducing "template" solutions. These template solutions are either industry specific or are based upon getting a simpler warehousing solution up quickly. A best of breed offers all sorts of configuration choices. The idea behind the template is that many of these configuration choices are predesignated in the template in order to achieve a faster implementation.

While over the years I’ve heard one WMS supplier after another brief me on their new templates. What I can’t recall hearing were examples of customers actually using these templates. Until now.

EcoVadis and BSR’s Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG) have teamed up to standardize environmental reporting requests for the sea freight supply chain.

 

Under the partnership, sustainable supply chain firm EcoVadis will align its environmental assessment questionnaires for sea carriers with the Clean Cargo Environmental Performance Survey framework. Clean Cargo members can also use the EcoVadis online collaboration platform to access reliable sustainability scorecards on their partners’ performance.

Growth opportunities offered by emerging markets outweigh concerns about the political and economic turmoil that rattled some developing countries in 2013, a survey of global logistics and trade executives shows.

Seventy-four percent of logistics professionals view prospects for emerging markets as "good" or "very good" for 2014, an annual survey of industry executives shows.