Thoughts, Articles, and Outlooks on the Industry

Depending on your source, analysts predict the world’s dependence on cold supply chains will increase by something like 8% or 15% over the next 5-10 years. Regulating the storage and transport of the perishable products in the cold supply chain is a patchwork of laws and agencies created at different levels of government. As well meaning as these agencies are,…

Supply chain logistics is a complex industry, requiring the ordering and tracking of raw goods; the high demands of made-to-order manufacturing; the pressures of same-day shipping of a wide variety of products; and the precision of tailored deliveries to thousands of buyers who demand transparent tracking applications, all done on a global scale in a competitive market. As if all…

Acting almost entirely behind the scenes, distributors are nevertheless vital for the success of the entire supply chain. They are a crucial part of the economy as a whole. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way everyone did business and turned traditional ways of working upside-down. Although the future remains uncertain, wholesale distribution is primed to enter a new era. The…

This is part 3 of a 3-part series. Part 1, Rattled Supply Chains, discusses the inability of Just-In-Time (JIT) logistics to adjust to recent demand shocks. Part 2, Innovated Spaces, discusses the severity of effects multi-channel retailing and the lockdowns of COVID-19 had on brick-and-mortar businesses. In Part 3, Saving Graces, we discuss how the fulfillment industry is adjusting to…

As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, Rattled Supply Chains, the rise of eCommerce has strained a global supply chain that was too focused on Just-in-Time (JIT) logistics. Retailers were left without enough inventory to meet the demand shocks of COVID-19. As supply chains began to normalize later in 2020, retailers also found themselves without enough warehousing space…

Before the coronavirus pandemic, online shopping was rising steadily. Adjusting fulfillment strategies to match that pace was a challenging but obtainable goal. The year-over-year growth between 2018 and 2019 of 14.9% was respectable. However, it did not prepare companies, or their supply chains, to meet the 93% growth seen in May of 2020. While the shift toward eCommerce has been…

Before March, 2020, automation in material handling had been on a slow rise for decades. Serious players were making investments both in infrastructure and research, but in most industries automating was a game of incremental gains. The workforce had been getting the job done, and the pace of automation was largely determined by its ROI when compared against an already…