Workforce

So, exactly how much economic impact does the supply chain have in the United States? Well, the answer is—we don’t really know all that precisely. Every year, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) publishes its Annual State of Logistics Report. And the most recent edition says the cost of U.S. business logistics is 8.3 percent of U.S. GDP, ...

Six months ago, the U.S. Census Bureau noted that a quarter of our nation’s population is now made up of 83.1 million millennials (born between 1982 and 2000). So, it should be a snap to fill those 1.4 million new supply chain jobs the U.S. Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics predicts our industry will create by 2018—right? Well, maybe. ...

Supply chain is the ‘it’ degree of the moment.” That’s according to Dana Stiffler, Gartner’s vice president of supply chain research. She spends her time looking at how supply professionals are being developed and, just as importantly, how the field is evolving even as you read this. And while supply chains have been in place just short of forever, the ...

“How do you know you’re at a supply chain event? Because the women are walking straight into the restroom, but there’s a line for the men’s room.” – 25-plus year supply chain veteran Michelle Livingstone of Home Depot Admit it. You laughed because, well, it’s true. But the material handling, logistics and supply chain industry takes that observation very seriously. ...

In addition to examining the eight innovative technologies anticipated to help meet companies’ struggles to meet customer demands for faster, better service at lower costs, the 2015 MHI Annual Industry Report: Supply chain innovation – Making the impossible possible acknowledges that the skill sets of the workers supporting them must be equally as sophisticated as the technologies themselves. Simply finding ...

What’s keeping you up at night?” It’s the question we’ve all been trained to ask when we want to understand the big challenges that our colleagues are facing. And for supply chain executives these days, the answers almost always involve people. How do we find, train and retain the talent that we need to sustain and grow our companies? The ...

A significant shortage of skilled supply chain professionals is prompting industry to focus on effective and inventive ways to recruit and retain talent. A growing interest in sophisticated, agile supply chains has combined with an improving economy and the graying of skilled executive ranks, among other factors, to create what one expert calls a “perfect storm” of need for supply ...

The value of certifications is debated in almost all industries as organizations try to quantify the benefits of certification versus college education, sometimes basing the answers on entry level versus management positions. Certifications seem to be growing in importance as the need for ongoing education that reflect changes in a global, technology-based business environment grows and as new positions are ...

Sometime in 2015, the young adults of the generation born between 1980 and 2000—the Millennials, or Generation Y—will displace Baby Boomers as the largest group in the workplace. Although some critics have labeled them as slackers with a sense of entitlement, that characterization is unfair. Gen Ys are undoubtedly different from both Gen Xers (born 1965-1980) and Boomers (born 1946-1965), ...

Employee turnover is costly. Losing one link in the chain of your operation can be quantified not only in the time it takes to replace that person, but that in which it takes your new hire to get up to speed. It’s a bill that can run anywhere from 50 to 400 percent of that staffer’s salary, according to the ...