Third-party logistics (3PL) providers offer their customers the opportunity to outsource some, or all, of their supply chain management functions. These might include warehousing, transportation, or even value-added services—such as goods procurement, kitting of parts or products, traceability and compliance, spare parts and production tooling supply, reverse logistics, repairs and more. Over the past three decades use of 3PLs has ...

Look at the list of the top U.S. logistics hubs and little has changed in the last century, except for the reasons why. Where Memphis’s access to the Mississippi River and cotton growth made it a hub early on, FedEx’s presence there has helped it hold onto its position. That’s just one example in what has been a relatively stable ...

Two megatrends are about to collide. And if careful planning isn’t in place, the resulting traffic jam could be felt throughout the logistics world. Trend No. 1: Globally, three in five people will live in urban areas by 2025, according to the United Nations. In the United States, already about 80 percent of the population lives in urban areas, according ...

It was 14 years ago that Dr. C John Langley, now professor of supply chain management at Penn State and director of development for the Center for Supply Chain Research at Smeal College of Business, laid out the seven immutable laws of collaborative logistics. “Immutable” turned out to be the key word. Despite how much has changed in terms of ...

Railroads are inherently efficient, be it in land usage, energy consumption or cost of moving goods. In fact, railroads are four times more fuel efficient than trucks, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Because greenhouse gas emissions are directly related to fuel consumption, this increased efficiency translates to greenhouse gas emissions that are 75 percent lower for rail than for ...

Until recently, large corporations have published annual sustainability reports that focused pri-marily on their own operations. But now, in an effort to create more transparent operations, those companies are reaching out to suppliers and requesting data on their sustainability ef-forts as well. These new reporting requirements are presenting challenges for suppliers, but also creating new opportunities for collaboration. Several factors ...

Piedmont Natural Gas, a natural gas utility serving customers in the Carolinas and Tennessee for more than 60 years, may seem at first blush to have little in common with Digital Lumens, a six-year-old Boston company specializing in “intelligent” computerized LED lighting systems. Both companies, however, are among those staking positions in an alternative-energy universe that should surge as more ...

As the U.S. economy was beginning to recover in 2010, researchers at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics were having a busy year. They published a number of studies looking at trends and technologies transforming global supply chains. Mixed in among these publications was a whitepaper with a shockingly personal and simple title: “Are You Prepared for the Supply ...

There’s a lot of chatter in the supply chain and material handling industries centered on innovation. MHI wanted to separate the buzz from the actual, day-to-day reality experienced by supply chain managers. So, at the end of 2013, we teamed up with Deloitte to conduct a survey crafted to verify the importance of current and emerging innovations—directly from the trenches. ...

The Rack Manufacturers Institute (RMI) celebrated its 50th anniversary back in 2008, but the organization has not been content to rest upon five decades of achievement. RMI’s 22 members—the companies that produce most of industrial storage racks installed in the U.S.—continue to work hard to improve their industry through research, consensus building and education. RMI is an affiliated trade association ...