Although sustainability has been a buzzword throughout supply chains since the dawn of the new millennium, the push to implement greener facility designs and practices has ebbed and flowed. The reason, says Steve Osburn, director in Kurt Salmon Associates’ supply chain practice, is that—for the majority of companies—when they consider going green, most want to know what amount of green, ...

Autonomous, or driverless, vehicles and drones have hit the main-stream of public consciousness. Hardly a week passes without with the national media breathlessly covering the technologies’ developments, including the good (Canadian officials using drones to map and determine the cause of a massive wildfire in May); the bad (a personal drone aircraft landing on the White House lawn last January ...

Today’s transportation landscape has been infused with technological innovations that are both disruptive and ripe with possibilities. Driverless vehicles, 3D printing, cyber security advances, artificial intelligence and other developments will impact this industry in yet-to-be-seen ways. Ask those in the trenches now, however, and the current “trends” that come to mind are the everyday challenges: dealing with regulations, fuel prices ...

In a prior issue of MHI Solutions and in the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report—Accelerating Change: How Innovation is Driving Digital, Always-on Supply Chains, you may have noticed that one of the emerging technologies or innovations driving supply chain success is analytics. With talk of the future impact of analytics (namely predictive analytics) on the “digital, chain, always-on supply chain,” ...

It doesn’t take much to uncover the biggest issues facing the healthcare sector. It’s likely something covered in today’s news. Price pressures have trickled down throughout the sector—leaving no aspect of the vast system, which accounted for 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2015, untouched. Skyrocketing costs and reductions in government reimbursements have created challenges throughout the ...

There have been three red f lags highlighting downside risks to growth and the U.S. economy for the better part of a year: manufacturing, energy and finance. These red flags were the impetus behind my recent book, Recession-Proof: How to Survive and Thrive in an Economic Downturn. Interestingly, these were also three of the main down­side risks to the global ...

When there are ergonomic issues in a plant, there are most likely production bottlenecks, waste or even lost time injuries. Since there is usually more than one way to solve a material handling (MH) problem, finding the best ergonomic solution and/or safety equipment is an investigative process. Here are some simple steps to start that process: 1. Ask yourself, “In ...

If the sharing economy came to supplier/vendor-customer relations, the speed of product development based on rapid information transfer would dramatically rise. The typical approach to research and discovery by those seeking a clear path towards a procurement decision is often built on existing relationships and less on spreading a wide net for thought leaders, and much less on collaboration opportunities. ...

B2B, distributed inventory networks and “less than truckload” shipping: Could uberization of the supply process be next? “We have seen the advent of the shar­ing economy explode—the concept that companies don’t necessarily need to own the entirety of their supply chain,” says David Schwebel, MHI manager, solutions and product groups at MHI. “Consumer’s demand fulfillment imme­diacy will steadily shift omnichannel verticals ...

While there are many standard lifts being manufactured by the industry, there are also applications using lifts that the industry may not think about. Today, it is not just about palletizing and de-palletizing. Recently, MHI Solutions spoke with lift manufacturers and asked them how day-to-day use of lifts has changed. Bob Clark, vice president of sales for MHI member Bishamon, ...