Global Trends

Companies big and small continue to invest in emerging supply chain technologies in a major way. Blockchain along with radio frequency identification (RFID) asset-tracking technology, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and quick response (QR) codes are all technologies promising to provide transparency, efficiency and cost savings to players at each end of the supply chain and every ...

By Nick Fortuna Modern supply chains are too complicated for any one company to do everything well, so strategic partnerships are key to solving the big problems facing the material handling industry and its customers. The right partnerships make business relationships more transparent, resilient and sustainable because customers get to work with best-of-breed providers working in their individual areas of ...

By Jennifer Pazour, Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Agility, the ability to move quickly and easily, is a powerful, and some may say necessary, skill for success in today’s supply chains. This need for agile decision-making is changing how organizations acquire warehousing and distribution capabilities. An emerging, more flexible option is on-demand warehousing, which enables ...

By Sandy Smith One of the first casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic was in-person shopping. With mandatory shutdowns of non-essential retail and customers fearful about being in public, necessities moved to e-commerce. As the pandemic lingered, it shifted habits in ways that aren’t necessarily changing back. “People are saying, ‘When are we going to get back to normal?’ That’s like ...

Merging these robotics and automated solutions with other digital technologies like IoT, AI, advanced analytics, AR/VR and cloud computing grows the resiliency firms need and builds in the visibility necessary to deliver on ever-changing consumer demands as well as mitigating future shocks. This issue of MHI Solutions tackles this important topic to help you answer these questions with best practices, ...

By John Paxton, CEO, MHI The pandemic has thrown many challenges into supply chains, and rarely have leaders faced such complex and changing conditions. What COVID-19 revealed is that many supply chains grew brittle in their decades-long quest for cost-savings while others that invested in emerging technologies and risk-planning proved to be agile and resilient enough to survive, and even ...

The organizations whose supply chains were aggressive about pre-pandemic investments in the digital technologies that enable them to serve e-commerce customers prove to be the most successful at weathering the coronavirus storm. By Carol Miller Expectations were low among financial analysts in the summer of 2020. Just prior to the release of second quarter results from multiple companies, predictions were ...

Proactive adoption strategies for robotics, automation and intelligent transportation management solutions for the supply chain providing greater operational resilience. By Mary Lou Jay There’s little downtime these days at companies that provide robotics, automation and intelligent transportation management solutions for the supply chain. Since the pandemic hit, they’ve been flooded with requests for their products. David Clear, chief revenue officer ...

Can you imagine a future where technology allows your employees to manipulate machines with their brain waves instead of manual controls or a keyboard? It might not be as far off as you think. By David Coburn Emerging technologies always draw their fair share of naysayers and skeptics—no doubt there were those who sniffed when the first powered forklift was ...

Digital technologies mitigate risk, allowing organizations to focus on better inventory management, planning for disruptions, future growth and other operational concerns. By Sara Pearson Specter The coronavirus lockdowns revealed shortcomings in many supply chains: cutting off supplies of raw materials and components; impacting labor with social distancing guidelines; increasing online consumer buying habits. As a result, many organizations’ supply chains ...