Hierarchical planning may not be a headliner everywhere, but it sure gets the job done when the right balance is struck between strategy, tactics and operations. A couple of months ago, a reporter asked some people what are the biggest challenges in the supply chain today and into the future. As you would expect, trade
Jim Rice, deputy director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, talks about innovation and its importance to the supply chain. Many companies today want to think of themselves as an innovator, but what does innovation look like in the supply chain? We put that question to Jim Rice, deputy director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and
While blockchain has tremendous potential in the supply chain, for now, it is primarily limited to pilots and small scale deployments. We spoke with Ken Cottrill, co-founder and research principal at Chain Business Insights LLC. He is also global communications consultant at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. He is currently pursuing research projects about
The path to a digital supply chain has many challenges but even greater possibilities. Digitization of the supply chain is not new. Either as a concept or as a reality. But it does find itself in an interesting spot these days. Consider these three perspectives. “The ‘digital supply chain’ will be the logistics technology concept
Forget the last mile. Tomorrow’s supply chain is about the final 50 feet. We spoke with Barbara Ivanov, director of the Urban Freight Lab at the University of Washington. She is also chief operating officer of the school’s Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center. Previously, Ivanov worked on freight research projects with the U.S. Department
These technologies promise to improve MRO efficiencies while reducing costs and downtime quite noticeably. How plants and warehouses operate is changing every day. There are no great revelations in that statement. However, the real revelations are in the unseen consequences of those daily changes when it comes to MRO. What will it take going forward
A new tool allowed the chip maker to fully automate inventory planning. The result: Inventory targets that planners accept more than 99.5% of the time. Inventory is a universal headache at most companies – with the potential for significant impacts, both good and bad. Too little inventory puts sales revenue at risk. Yet, having too
NASA is looking to the logistics industry for proposals to deliver supplies to the moon Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before! …… Captain James
This is a time of innovation in TMS as the software’s capabilities broaden significantly, improving its deliverables across the supply chain. Transportation is transportation. Not much change there except for the talk about autonomous trucks, right? Well, not exactly. Especially if you’re taking a look at the NextGen evolution of transportation management systems (TMS). The
The cloud could be the most impactful of all NextGen technologies. Of all the NextGen supply chain technologies, the cloud could be the most important today. Not only is it already widely used and growing rapidly, but cloud is central to optimizing supply chain performance on a broad scale. Some say that cloud will be
