There’s no denying that Amazon (and e-commerce more generally) has irrevocably changed the science of warehouse management. Warehouses, which were once seen as a necessary but uninspiring cost center, are now the lynchpin in many companies’ distribution strategies. Order turnaround has been cut from days to hours, so highly-organized warehouse processes are a must to […]
By practically any metric, 2018 was a roller-coaster of a year for anyone in the world of logistics or supply chain management. The economy boomed, but the rumblings of nationalism and isolationism threatened to bring the expansion to a screeching halt. Technological developments promised huge leaps in efficiency, but the bottleneck of the driver shortage […]
It seems like just yesterday Millennials were the new generation disrupting old paradigms and forcing businesses to adapt to their preferences. But these days, there’s a fresh crop of young people joining the workforce and the marketplace: Generation Z. Gen Z–generally considered to comprise people born between 1995 and 2005–is beginning to come of age, […]
As relations between the U.S. and China remain in turmoil, and China shifts the focus of its economy away from low-value manufacturing, supply chain managers are increasingly scouting for new countries in which to do business, and many are particularly curious about India. India, after all, boasts the world’s ninth-largest economy, a booming IT sector, […]
In the weeks since the U.S., Canada, and Mexico signed the USMCA trade deal, analysts around the world have begun to unpack how this new arrangement differs from NAFTA, and what it may portend for future negotiations with the U.S.. To be sure, the Trump Administration’s hard-line bargaining tactics secured some “wins” for American manufacturers, […]
China’s Belt and Road Initiative is one of the most ambitious undertakings in modern history, and of all its myriad projects, the construction of new rail lines to connect China with Europe are among the most visible. Like much of the Belt and Road, the impact of China-Europe rail is fiercely debated, with some observers […]
According to the most famous formulation of chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Whether or not you believe that, it is indisputably true that an actual hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico will undoubtedly cause ripples in supply chains throughout North America. So […]
On April 26, the CEO of Maersk Shipping, Sǿren Skou, delivered a stinging indictment of government shipping subsidies, which he criticized as anticompetitive, and which threaten to stifle the carrier industry’s burgeoning recovery. Speaking at a Singapore shipping conference, Skou accused the subsidies of encouraging companies to build ships which are “not needed, for companies […]
It’s a volatile time for US-China relations, and the effects of the brewing trade war are being felt around the world. Seemingly every week, a new volley of tariffs is announced by the Chinese government or the Trump administration, creating uncertainty for freight forwarders, Wall Street traders, and heartland farmers alike. Despite the fact that […]
In recent months, shippers and freight forwarders have noticed a precipitous drop in the reliability of transatlantic carrier schedules. According to JOC, in 2017, reliability on westbound transatlantic routes fell 10.5 percent to 67.4 percent, while eastbound routes fell 10.6 percent, to land at 70.2 percent reliability. The first few months of 2018 have been […]