It is a challenging time for manufacturers and retailers that must fulfill e-commerce orders faster and faster without compromising accuracy or economy. Members of the Order Fulfillment Solutions (OFS) Industry Group of MHI provide order fulfillment solutions to these challenges by helping to manage rising transportation costs, improve channel strategies, create deeper visibility into the supply chain and develop automated ...

We often describe the global economy as a supply chain. Generally speaking, the United States and Europe are key consuming economies at the most downstream point in the global supply chain, while China occupies one of the critical midstream positions, and commodity producing economies are at upstream points in the global economy. The good news is that the outlook for ...

Supply chain innovation is becoming a deliberate strategy for companies, rather than an accidental occurrence. and the MHI Executive Summit and Annual Conference in San Diego helps to highlight just how important that trend will be in the next few years to cope with the rate of change in business. We’re all familiar with the Fortune 500 list of the ...

Back in March, at MODEX 2014, we released the MHI Annual Industry Report: Innovations That Drive Supply Chains. That report, which is still available as a free download on www.MHI.org, was the first of a series of yearly studies that MHI has partnered with Deloitte to conduct. The Annual Industry Report separates the buzz from the reality surrounding five hot ...

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 ...