On January 5th, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 left Portland, Oregon en route to Ontario, California. Just minutes into the flight, the Boeing 737 Max 9 lost a door plug, creating a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft. Fortunately, all 171 passengers and six crew members were safe, largely because the plane had only reached 16,000 feet, minimizing the amount of cabin decompression that took place. It also helped that no one was sitting in front of the plug, which was put in place to cover a spo...
Feb 08, 2024•21 min
In 2013, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted that drone deliveries would be a reality in five years. More than 10 years later, they are still largely in the pilot phase, but a drone final mile is becoming a reality fast for some parts of the company. As the FAA reduces restrictions on drone deliveries in places like the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, they are kicking off a race to make drone deliveries realistic, affordable, and available to consumers, bringing small items to consumers in...
Feb 01, 2024•24 min
In June 2023, Sharat Ganapati, an Assistant Professor of International Economics at Georgetown University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Woan Foong Wong, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon, wrote a research paper that was published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Titled How Far Goods Travel: Global Transport and Supply Chains from 1965-2020, the paper takes a new look at global transportation. Unlike traditional t...
Jan 25, 2024•24 min
On New Year’s Eve, weeks of rising tension in the Red Sea reached a boiling point. Houthi militants tried to board the Maersk Hangzhou just one day after hitting the vessel with a missile. The ship’s crew sent out a distress signal that was picked up by the USS Eisenhower and the USS Gravely, which sent helicopters to support the on-ship-security team. Three Houthi ships were destroyed and ten assailants were killed, according to the Houthi military’s own report. The crew of the Hangzhou is safe...
Jan 18, 2024•19 min
Effective today, Dial P for Procurement is the Art of Supply. Rather than being a change in content, this rebrand brings the name and brand identity of the show into alignment with the content we have already been creating. Building on the strength of the category-leading Art of Procurement podcast, Art of Supply will focus on supply chain topics and news stories while advocating for the impact all supply management professionals can have on companies, industries, the environment, and people eve...
Jan 11, 2024•15 min
Looking all the way back to the beginning of the year has a way of putting everything into perspective. The individual and cumulative impact of all of the events that took place in 2023 can not be understated: from legal action, to labor unions, to geopolitics. In this episode, Kelly Barner reviews the stories and topics covered on Dial P for Procurement this year - following the lead of the listening audience. She goes back to the beginning of the year to see which three Dial P for Procurement ...
Dec 28, 2023•19 min
With all the recent buzz about electric vehicles (EVs), not to mention the push towards sustainability and emissions reduction, it was only going to be a matter of time before electric Class 8 trucks entered the scene. Class 8s are classic semis or tractor trailers, so they are not just part of the supply chain, they have supply chains themselves. There are a number of companies in the space, some with familiar names and some that are startups. Commercial electric trucking has been in the news r...
Dec 21, 2023•22 min
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO, is usually associated with organized crime. It was used in 1992 to bring down the Gambino Crime family and sentence John Gotti to life in prison. But there is no supply chain mafia, right? A recently filed legal complaint will ask and hopefully answer that very question… On December 8th, it was disclosed that PYNQ Logistics Services had filed a lawsuit against FedEx Ground, claiming FedEx engaged in a deliberate effort...
Dec 14, 2023•25 min
The People’s Republic of Bangladesh in Southeast Asia is the second-largest exporter of ready-made garments in the world. The ready-made garment sector employs 4.4 million workers, and 65 percent of them are women. 84 percent of the country’s exports are from this one sector. The garment workers get a pay raise every five years, and the last five have not been particularly kind - with the impact of the pandemic, increased food and food and fuel prices thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ...
Dec 07, 2023•25 min
“Did you ever think we'd be talking this much about supply chains?” - President Biden On Monday, November 27, 2023, President Biden announced the creation of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience. The event was big news for the administration and for supply chain professionals. Almost 30 new actions focused on strengthening economically important and national security-critical supply chains were rolled out. But the devil is always in the details. And if we are going to figure out wh...
Nov 30, 2023•22 min
The stories we cover on Dial P for Procurement are pulled from the headlines, but some have more ‘legs’ than others. Just because a story, person, or company slides down in the feed, we can’t stop following it. In this week’s episode of Dial P for Procurement, Kelly Barner looks back at the people who played large roles in three past episodes to find out the answer to one common question: where are they now? What happened with the company that sued McDonald’s over their supplier diversity progra...
Nov 23, 2023•18 min
Convoy was a digital freight brokerage founded by former Amazon executives to digitally revolutionize a high-transaction, low-profit space. Investors included Bill Gates, former Vice President Al Gore, Bono and The Edge from U2, the investment arm of Google parent Alphabet, and Jeff Bezos. Convoy was launched in 2015, reached a $3.8 Billion valuation in early 2022, and was gone less than 18 months later. What was Convoy’s cause of death? As you might have guessed, there was more than one. In thi...
Nov 16, 2023•26 min
According to the National Retail Federation, 43 percent of people started doing their holiday shopping in October, leading the NRF to predict a year-over-year holiday spending increase of 3 to 4 percent. 58 percent of shoppers will buy online, and all of those gifts have to be packed and shipped… probably via small parcel channels. And yet, final mile carriers like FedEx and UPS are bracing for a weaker than usual holiday shopping season. In this week’s Dial P for Procurement, Kelly Barner looks...
Nov 09, 2023•24 min
“Coke is everywhere. In fact, when I travel to the developing world, Coke feels ubiquitous. [...] If we can understand what makes something like Coca-Cola ubiquitous, we can apply those lessons then for the public good.” -Melinda Gates In Africa, nearly half of people lack access to critical medicines. The continent covers 11.7 million square miles and is divided into 54 different countries. Physical infrastructure is a huge problem, meaning that the roads themselves serve as roadblocks for crit...
Nov 02, 2023•22 min
In 2012, LEGO made a commitment to make all of their bricks out of sustainable materials by 2030, just in time for the company’s 100th anniversary. As Tim Guy Brooks, LEGO’s head of environmental responsibility said, “We can’t say we inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow if we’re ruining the planet.” The company has been willing to invest and experiment, but a solution continues to elude them. Corn-based bricks were too soft and wheat-based ones didn’t look right. Bricks made from other m...
Oct 26, 2023•22 min
The last two years have brought us many news stories about labor unions throwing their weight around. First there was the fear that the railway workers unions would stop freight in the lead up to Christmas, then we watched as the Teamsters negotiated with Yellow and UPS, managing to avoid a strike in both cases, the United Auto Workers union is now actively on strike, and Kaiser Permanente’s workers have a tentative deal on the table for ratification by their members in the largest healthcare la...
Oct 19, 2023•21 min
In early September, J.M. Smucker announced that they had struck a deal to acquire Hostess, the 130 year old maker of treats like Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Ding Dongs, Zingers, and Voortman cookies. Smucker agreed to pay $5.6 Billion including $900 Million in debt for the company. Most people felt the deal was overpriced, and Smucker’s stock fell 7 percent, but the two executive teams had done their homework, and they are convinced that the potential synergies between the two organizations are well worth...
Oct 12, 2023•20 min
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.” ― Benjamin Franklin Banned Book Week was started in 1982 to call attention to censorship and intellectual freedom. In 2023, it runs from October 1-7, culminating with Let Freedom Read day on Saturday the 7th. This week and the many events that will fill it may be driven by librarians, but the premise behind it is one that every adult should be able to embrace. N...
Oct 05, 2023•25 min
Google is currently being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Not since they went after Microsoft in 1994 has there been such a major antitrust trial with such widespread implications - and never before has U.S. antitrust law been so tested. While it is not illegal to have a monopoly, it is illegal to stifle competition in order to keep one. Google must now prove that it is the quality of their search product - not their statistically dominant ...
Sep 28, 2023•22 min
After years of pandemic-fueled spikes in demand for chocolate and salty snacks, Hershey’s supply chain hit the wall. During The Hershey Company’s second quarter earnings call on July 28, 2022, CEO Michele Buck warned investors that the company “will not be able to fully meet consumer demand" for Halloween candy. Ingredients were in short supply, and with production lines shared by regular and seasonal merchandise, the company had some tough decisions to make. Despite their best efforts, Hershey ...
Sep 21, 2023•21 min
News stories have a way of going from the front page to the scrap heap, and even the spotlight focused on the supply chain over the past few years couldn’t prevent it from happening altogether. One specific element of supply chain - cold chain logistics - recently resurfaced in coverage of the costs and challenges surrounding transport of Ozempic and Wegovy, different brand names for the same prescription injection. Cold chain is a modern marvel, but while it is impressive and critical, it is al...
Sep 14, 2023•25 min
“You can’t unscramble eggs.” – J.P. Morgan There are few companies in the United States as storied and historic as U.S. Steel. Dating all the way back to the Gilded Age, U.S. Steel was formed in 1901 when J.P. Morgan financed the merger of Andrew Carnegie’s Federal Steel and National Steel, into one behemoth. The resulting company is the now second largest steel company in the United States and the eighth largest in the world. U.S. Steel has survived industrialization, two world wars, and the mo...
Sep 07, 2023•18 min
In the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, he writes about the flywheel effect, a prosperous cycle of work and change that eventually picks up speed and builds its own momentum. Anyone that has taken a product to market or started a company has tried to get that virtuous cycle going. Fewer people talk about the flywheel effect’s evil cousin: the doom loop. Also covered by Collins, the doom loop is what takes down the companies that want to affect positive change but can’t figure out how. He cal...
Aug 31, 2023•25 min
On July 30th 2023, Yellow Freight announced that they would cease operations after 99 years in business. Chapter 11 bankruptcy followed just one week later. It took more than one thing to bring about Yellow’s bankruptcy, one of the largest in the history of the trucking industry: poorly integrated acquisitions, a strained relationship with the Federal government, and an ill-timed fight with the Teamsters union. The more coverage comes out about Yellow’s recent bankruptcy, the more surprising it ...
Aug 24, 2023•25 min
“For men like Ford, Firestone, and Edison, whose success in the world had given them access to any thing they might want, these impressions [of the great Smoky Mountains] had a value beyond calculation.” American Journey, p. 276 In 1918, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and naturalist John Burroughs took a long road trip in the eastern United States. They slept under the stars, cooked outside, and made their way through the countryside, meeting people, investigating curiosities, and ...
Aug 17, 2023•25 min
There is something troubling going on in the ESG movement. Recent news stories on ESG investing, the status of Chief Diversity Officers, and Pride month raise questions about the corporate commitment to such programs. While ESG is not a new idea - in fact, the corporate social responsibility programs that preceded it date back to the 1970s - there has always been a tension between what companies say about environmental and social issues and what they are able to do. In this episode of Dial P, Ke...
Aug 10, 2023•26 min
China is one of the most important consumer, industrial, and raw materials markets in the world. They also happen to be a bad actor in terms of environmental practices and human rights. Companies looking to do business in China need to go in with their eyes wide open, prepared to handle a complicated set of decisions and PR maneuvers. That is the backdrop for a very odd set of circumstances that played out at the 2023 China Automobile Forum in early July. Tesla was one of 16 EV companies - the o...
Aug 03, 2023•25 min
Skills gaps are a huge and costly problem in the corporate world. According to Talent Guard, skill gaps currently cost the U.S. economy around $13 billion per month, and Deloitte recently cited an estimated $2.5 trillion total cost over the next decade. Korn Ferry has projected that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because there aren’t enough skilled people to take them. Run those facts against the lagging performance of America’s public schools. Children lost one-third of a ...
Jul 27, 2023•26 min
Mankind has been on an industrial evolutionary journey since 1760. Starting with the steam engine, we have progressed through hundreds of years of innovation, advancement, and reinvention. Procurement has been there every step of the way, harnessing the power of new technologies and meeting an ever-growing list of challenges and requirements presented to us by company leadership and industry competition. In this episode of Dial P for Procurement, Kelly Barner takes listeners on a journey through...
Jul 20, 2023•29 min
On June 23rd, news broke that the Wagner Group, a private militia operating on behalf of Russia in the war with Ukraine, was staging an armed rebellion against Russia. The world watched and held its breath as one bad guy squared off against another, until - it was over as soon as it started. It quickly became clear that what was unfolding before our eyes was a supplier relationship gone very, VERY wrong. In this episode of Dial P for Procurement, Kelly Barner makes the case that: An unfavorable ...
Jul 13, 2023•21 min
