Fast-Food CIOs Are Fast Learners

This $707 billion global industry is building more intimate customer relationships by pushing the IT envelope on technologies like real-time data analysis, inventory-tracking sensors and mobile payments

U.S.-NAFTA trade is up 2% annually in August (BTS reports )

The United States Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) said today that trade using surface transportation between the United States and its North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners Canada and Mexico was up 2.0 percent in August 2013 compared to August 2012 at $96.5 billion.

8th November in Supply Chain history

Today is the 90th anniversary since Jack St. Clair Kilby was born. Jack was an American electrical engineer who took part  in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2000.
He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer.

Logistics in 2020: Role of IT

Key areas where IT will support logistics companies in achieving success in 2020:

Data-sharing; now more than ever before, information is power. The electronic exchange of information (including documentation) and financial data with supply chain partners, including regulatory bodies, will be becoming mandatory in many regions by 2020.

Logistics in 2020: Warehousing

At the heart of the logistics industry is warehousing. Often dismissed as the low-tech, low-innovation ‘workhorse’ of the supply chain, warehousing is in fact the area most pivotal in enabling the logistics industry to keep up with the fast pace of change.

Logistics in 2020: Rail Freight

With road congestion, high fuel prices and fewer ports being serviced by mega-container ships, the

(relatively) fuel efficient option of rail freight is set to play a more important role in global logistics going forward.

Logistics in 2020: Air & Sea Freight

Globalization has meant that air and sea freight play a major role in getting consumer goods –

from fruit and vegetables to computer games – on the shelves in stores (online and virtual).

Yet both modalities are hard-hit by the sudden changes in volumes created by lower or higher

than expected levels of consumer demand that became common following the downturn.

Logistics in 2020: Road Freight

Road freight represents a major part of most LSPs’ strategies. Regardless of the importance of other modalities to global logistics, it is almost impossible for the supply chain to keep moving, either domestically or internationally, without using the road network. Yet LSPs are facing a number of key challenges in keeping the supply chain moving via our increasingly congested roads:

Logistics in 2020: Technology

Technology is, by its very nature, constantly evolving. By the beginning of the 21st century, businesses
in almost every sector were already reliant on increasingly sophisticated telecommunications and IT. By
the beginning of the second decade, many western markets could boast a mobile phone in use for every
member of the population, and doing business without smart phones and handheld devices would be
unthinkable.

Logistics in 2020

Today, 2020 seems a relatively long way in the future. Although it’s a date that features in our
longer-term plans, it isn’t close enough for most of us to envisage precisely what we’ll be doing,
or translating strategic aims and high-level objectives into tactical activities.