MHI Newswire

Autonomous driving with long-distance trucks will be a reality in ten years time, says Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz. They recently debuted a demonstration video of its Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 showing the vehicle driving on its own on Germany’s autobahn.

Using a system the company calls the Highway Pilot, the human driver can switch control of the truck to the vehicle’s embedded system with the driver riding hands-free as a passenger. The Highway Pilot is comparable to an autopilot system in an airplane—probably the most advanced form of autonomous mobility in existence today.

Third-party logistics (3PL) providers will take a larger share of U.S. transportation and logistics spending in 2014, according to a forecast from Armstrong & Associates Inc., a consultancy.

The Armstrong data, which appeared today in a research note published by investment firm Morgan Stanley & Co., projected that 3PL gross revenues, as a percentage of total logistics costs, will approach 11.2 percent this year. For 2013, the percentage is expected to come in at around 10.8 percent. The 2013 data has not been finalized. Gross 3PL revenues are sales before factoring in the cost of purchased transportation. Third-party providers generally do not own transport assets and rely on others to move their customers' freight.

Too much inventory or not enough. It’s the eternal struggle at the heart of effective supply chain management, but it’s an equation organizations continually get wrong. If they are to get it right they need to completely shake up the way their inventory is being managed.

It’s a typical situation; a business holds too much inventory, so attempts to reduce it. Production stops until inventory is cut to an acceptable level, only to find, a few weeks later, customers can’t get the products they want. So production restarts and runs flat out for the next few months. The result? The organization ends up with more inventory than it started with. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Just follow these eight simple tips.

The rise of 3D printing has led some to speculate on the transformative effects it could have for traditional supply chains

 

Cited by some as ‘the next industrial revolution’, 3D printing is slowly reshaping the traditional supply chain, and could conceivably be the single most disruptive breakthrough since progressive assembly. "The fundamental economics of manufacturing changes with additive manufacturing," says Terry Harrison of the Supply Chain and Information Systems Department at Pennsylvania State University.

May 2014 booked orders for conveyor equipment increased 9.1% when compared to May 2013 orders, according to the Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association. May 2014 booked orders when compared to April 2014 booked orders were up 1.1%.

May Booked Orders were up 1.3% for bulk handling equipment and up 1.2% for unit handling equipment when compared to April.

The technology-driven shift to omnichannel shopping is the most transformative change to hit retail in decades. Yet in a global survey of CEOs conducted by PwC, only 22 percent felt this monumental shift would impact their organizations. Are these retail CEOs missing the boat?

 

In the midst of this omnichannel transformation, most of the CEOs surveyed still seem to be focused on the traditional levers of growth. Their top three priorities all deal with expansion — expanding into new regions or markets, expanding by opening more stores, and expanding through mergers and acquisitions. They appear to be fixated on the numbers at a time when success in retail is shifting to providing the best possible customer experience across channels.

The recent 2014 18th Annual Third Party Logistics Study results showed the continuing, positive overall nature of shipper-3PL relationships.

Shippers agree that 3PLs provide new and innovative ways to improve logistics effectiveness, and that they are sufficiently agile and flexible to accommodate future business needs and challenges. Both parties view them as being successful, and shippers are seeing positive results again this year including:

–An average logistics cost reduction of 11%

–Average inventory cost reduction of 6%

–An average fixed logistics cost reduction of 23%

On July 1, Canada celebrated its 147th birthday. The relatively young country faces some of the same problems the US does, namely taking a major hit to manufacturing hubs as a result of globalization. While there is no magical remedy for that situation, applying new technology, including 3D printing, can help the industry get back on course.

All the articles on 3D printing and manufacturing in Canada I've seen refer to Nigel Southway, a productivity consultant and the co-author of Cycle Time Management. He serves as the chair of the Toronto chapter of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, which launched Take Back Manufacturing two years ago. He also currently teaches a college course on supply chain management. I spoke with him at some length on the phone about his take on the problems and possible solutions for manufacturing in Canada.

For growing ecommerce companies, timeliness is next to godliness. According to the 2014 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper survey, half of consumers have abandoned carts due to a lengthy delivery time or no delivery date provided on a retailer’s website. Customer satisfaction is so closely tied to delivery time that prompt delivery is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Twenty-seven percent of that same group of consumers said that the lateness of delivery would negatively influence their decision to shop with that retailer again.

The carrier isn’t solely responsible for delivery, however. The process starts with a logistics provider, one who is invested in the business’ mission and vision. As a company scales, the assumption is that the physical footprint of the third-party logistics provider should scale along with it.

What makes a great supply-chain leader? Steve DiBlasi, vice president of global sourcing with Lanier Clothes, has an answer.

The very best supply-chain software on the market will not propel an organization to success, says DiBlasi. The real key is effective leadership.

 

"If you don’t have leaders throughout your organization," he says, "you’re never going to be as successful as you can be."

A strong domestic supplier ‘eco-system’ will be vital for a successful advanced manufacturing sector in the UK and the government must create a globally competitive investment environment for industry to flourish, the Wright report has concluded.

Commissioned by the Labour Party and written by Jaguar Land Rover’s executive director Mike Wright, the report states small and medium-sized businesses in the advanced manufacturing supply chain are crucial to the overall success of the sector.

Having suppliers in close proximity will strengthen relationships and communication, allow for shared resources and spill-overs and enable shorter and more efficient logistical chains, the report stated.

A long-standing challenge in the electronics supply chain is the management of so-called ‘excess’ inventory. When an OEM or EMS provider orders too much product, it is often sold in the open market to distributors that are not franchised by component suppliers. 

The problems this creates for the authorized channel include the taint of counterfeit components in the electronics supply chain. Authorization—or franchises—are designed to protect suppliers, distributors and customers. From the customer standpoint, procuring product from an authorized distributor is similar to acquiring it directly from the supplier in terms of brand, quality and performance.

Aviation and marine biofuels represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the global biofuels market. In the last five years, more than 40 commercial airlines around the world have flown an estimated 600,000 miles powered at least in part by biofuels.

"The United States is expected to emerge as the clear leader in the construction of integrated biorefineries capable of producing bio-based jet fuel and marine distillates over the next 10 years," says Mackinnon Lawrence, research director with Navigant Research. "New biorefinery construction in the U.S. is expected to generate $7.8 billion in cumulative revenue over the next 10 years, representing 66 percent of the revenue generated globally."