I recently heard a presentation by Indiana University Professor of International Strategic Management, Dr. Marjorie Lyles, on the growing role of new position, Relationship Managers. Supply Chain is all about relationships with suppliers, transportation carriers and operators, storage facilities and … Read More
I recently heard the President and CEO of the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders speak. As an organization promoting transportation infrastructure, it finds itself in interesting times. In the good old days, infrastructure fuel taxes could be sold to voters … Read More
Last week I attended the ProMat convention, a material handling convention featuring vendors of sort of products from machines to software related to material handling. Among the educational seminars I attended was an educational session where the Physical Internet and … Read More
What is the “Physical Internet”? And is it remotely practical from a logistics practitioner’s point of view? Lastly, should we not rename the “Physical Internet” the “Supply Chain of Things”? Every once in a while one is humbled when a … Read More
In January 2015, Forbes magazine had an article about Zappo using a Uber-like software to schedule their customer service reps. Like Uber, which changes a premium for peak ride periods, Zappo will pay its customer service reps higher wages in … Read More
2014, My Predictions and How They turned out, 2015 to follow this section Before I attempt to look ahead, let’s see how cloudy my crystal ball was back in December 2013. Here is what I predicted and what I missed. … Read More
When I was a kid back in the 1960’s, I use to eagerly await the latest edition on television of the “Jetsons”, an animated cartoon of what it would be like in the future. With the flying cars, building mostly … Read More
In a Supply Chain Digest video conference, MIT’s Chris Caplice, Executive Director for the Center of Transportation and Logistics at MIT, said something that was surprising. Studies show he noted that over a third of the time the winning bidder … Read More
For many years, I worked in the salt industry. A significant part of the business was selling salt for the purpose of deicing winter streets and sidewalks. Every year about this (September or October), people would say in my presence … Read More
For mid-size and large organizations the supply chain and logistics process is engaged on two levels, the high level, international space station level, where grand strategies and processes are designed for the organization. Then there is the lower level over … Read More