To say the last week was eventful would be an understatement. The first major event was Sunday’s Super Bowl LIV when the Kansas City Chiefs took home the Lamar Hunt Trophy after a fifty-year drought. The next day – the one of the long-awaited Iowa Caucuses – turned into a semi-fiasco when it took […]
On January 15, XPO Logistics announced that it is exploring a possible spinoff of one or more business units, not including the North American LTL business, In other words, everything else is for sale – European Logistics, European Transportation, North American Logistics, and North American Transportation (with the exception of LTL). In announcing this […]
As Meet the Press suggested on Sunday, Washington is preoccupied with three things right now – Iran, Impeachment and Iowa (caucuses), all of which are important. But there are some other initiatives being considered that will impact on the supply chain, either directly or indirectly. Two of these could affect the environment as well, […]
From time to time, at the end of the year, I dig out my crystal ball and try to predict what supply chain developments we might see in the coming year. Sometimes I have been right, and other predictions have fallen flat. For example, I really thought the Cowboys would be in the 2020 […]
As almost everyone probably recalls by now, early in his election campaign, President Trump advocated the renegotiation or complete dissolution of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and continued to push the idea after he was elected. First conceived in 1987, NAFTA was finally signed into law in 1994, and has been very […]
With the increase in global commerce over the past several years, the use of foreign trade zones (FTZs) has become more prevalent with firms importing goods from competitive nations such as China, India, and the European countries. But while many supply chain managers know a little about FTZs, the concept is often misunderstood; and […]
For fifteen years the trucking industry has been plagued by a shortage of drivers. And for fifteen years, we have seen a continuous flow of information about the driver shortage and how it has affected, or will affect the shipping public. Since almost everyone has a different perspective, it is difficult to get a […]
For years we have heard the old adage that “Information is Power”, the thought being that if one controlled the information, the power would come. A few years ago, a consultant put a damper on that when he said that if information were power, the librarians would own the world. The real power would be […]
There are three significant issues that have moved to the supply chain forefront in the last couple of weeks. Although unrelated, and not final, each of them stands to affect the management of our supply chains. The first and potentially, the most serious is the ongoing tariff skirmish between the U. S. and China. Last […]
The last few weeks have demonstrated that no one of us is totally secure, regardless of where we are or what we are doing. The recent, tragic events in El Paso and Dayton are painful reminders of that. While these were not workplace violence incidents, the killing of two managers of a Walmart store in […]