“The way we were running distribution, the processes we were using, it wasn’t a matter of, ‘Well, just incrementally improve what you’ve got.’ “We needed to rethink, take a step back and say, ‘Are we really set up the way we need to be set up?’” - Marcia Brey , VP of Logistics for GE Appliances (via the WSJ) GE Appliances recently made news for a series of planned investments in their supply chain. As interesting as their efforts are today, they are the next step in an ongoing series of advancem...
Sep 12, 2024•25 min
Procurement and supply chain professionals rely upon competitive market dynamics. After all, competition drives innovation, cost savings, efficiency, and - profit. Anything that changes the dynamics around the benefits associated with disclosed innovation has the potential to alter how companies invest, how much of that information they make public, and, ultimately, the value and diversity of solutions available to consumers of all kinds. In this week’s episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner wel...
Sep 05, 2024•35 min
“The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” - Norman Vincent Peale The Art of Supply podcast regularly covers topics that come with a bit of discomfort: allegations of child labor and greenwashing, the role of government regulations in bringing about change, and China, and absolutely anything to do with China. It isn’t possible to talk about topics like these without getting feedback, and that feedback often takes the form of criticism. In t...
Aug 29, 2024•21 min
There are a lot of preconceived notions about the barriers preventing electrified road freight from becoming mainstream. It is seen as too difficult, expensive, complicated, inefficient, and more. Most of those perceptions are based on the approaches to electrified trucking that have been tried so far. Perhaps by taking a different approach we can advance the transition away from diesel. In this episode of Art of Supply, Kelly Barner speaks with Ian Rust, the Founder and CEO at Revoy, a company ...
Aug 22, 2024•43 min
Companies and consumers regularly rely on product descriptions to decide whether or not to make a purchase and to determine the right price for that product. In the case of seafood, those descriptions and tiers create choices for consumers, but they also provide a built in incentive for fraud at scale. Any time someone is willing to pay a higher margin for a premium product, someone else is willing to turn that into an opportunity for profit. The problem is so widespread, that estimates suggest ...
Aug 15, 2024•27 min
“Every time I don't have a delivery truck stop in front of your house, 800 grams of CO2 is never created.” - Mike Robinson , Head of Retail Solutions and a Founding Member at The Eighth Notch (T8N) The ecommerce boom of the last few years has led to new business models and consumer experiences, but it has also added to the number of packages being delivered each day. Does the number of packages correlate to the number of items ordered? No, it does not. Placing an online order for 7 items of clot...
Aug 08, 2024•50 min
On June 26th, The Wall Street Journal reported that FedEx plans to spin off their freight division - and the most interesting part is why. FedEx Freight is the less-than-truckload (LTL) division of the company. It is the most profitable division, with a recent operating margin over 20 percent, compared to 11.8 percent for FedEx Ground and 2 percent for FedEx Express. The company has realized that the division is so successful it will generate more shareholder value on its own. With estimated val...
Aug 01, 2024•23 min
According to reporting in the New York Times, about 20 million containers travel through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach California annually. Those containers are full of goods that need to travel to warehouses, stores, and consumer homes by truck and rail. Unfortunately, a growing percentage of those goods never arrive, thanks to a sharp uptick in cargo theft. As Supply Chain Brain has reported, U.S. cargo thefts were up 9 percent year-over-year in 2023, with an additional increase at t...
Jul 25, 2024•24 min
Section 321 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930 contains a small provision known as ‘de minimis.’ From a Latin phrase meaning “the law does not concern itself with trifles,” this provision has become a major concern for retailers, shippers, and regulators. De minimis is supposed to simplify shipping so that packages under $800 can be sent to U.S. consumers from overseas without distracting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol from their core mission. With the rise in global ecommerce, however, this provisi...
Jul 18, 2024•22 min
“You can't just come with ideas. You’ve got to show that you're going to be on the journey with them.” - Adrian Ristow , Executive Director of Project Last Mile “Coca-Cola Project Last Mile is held within the practitioners of my craft to be the flagship model of what good looks like in terms of public-private partnerships.” - David Canarutto, Private Sector Relationship Manager at The Global Fund For over a decade, one public-private partnership has worked to make lifesaving medicines available ...
Jul 11, 2024•51 min
About 15 years ago, someone noticed that while you could buy a cold Coca-Cola in the most remote corners of Africa, lifesaving medicines that require cold chain logistics were nowhere to be found. A group approached the company and asked, will you teach us how you manage your supply chain in rural Africa so we can apply those learnings to healthcare? Coca-Cola not only said yes, they threw their full support behind the effort that would come to be known as Project Last Mile. The public-private p...
Jul 04, 2024•24 min
Red Lobster, the largest seafood chain in the United States, declared bankruptcy on May 19, 2024. As of the filing, they had 551 locations operating in 44 states, but underperforming locations have already started to close. What brought about the bankruptcy of the restaurant chain that rapper Flavor Flav describes as “one of America's greatest dining dynasties”? It wasn’t all-you-can-eat shrimp, as some have suggested, but it may very well have been endless real estate costs. In this week’s epis...
Jun 27, 2024•22 min
On May 25, the Federal Trade Commission announced their consent for the planned acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources by ExxonMobil. It was the largest shale oil and gas merger ever planned. The consent may not have been a surprise, but one of the conditions was: that former Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield was prohibited from taking a planned seat on ExxonMobil’s board and accused of colluding with other industry players to increase consumer prices and maximize company profits. ...
Jun 20, 2024•19 min
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, took effect in June of 2022 to protect an ethnically Turkish, predominantly Muslim minority that lives in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China. The Uyghurs have been the subject of forced labor claims and investigations - truly the stuff of supply chain nightmares. If companies try to import anything connected to Xinjiang into the United States, they must prove conclusively that it did not involve forced labor. But what if the Uyghurs are move...
Jun 13, 2024•19 min
On April 30th, 2024, the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Personnel, held a hearing about the Department Of Defense’s efforts to ensure service members would have access to safe, high-quality pharmaceuticals. One of the panelists invited to testify was Victor Suarez, a retired Colonel from the United States Army. He worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) before becoming the Lead Vaccine Program Manager for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine during Opera...
Jun 06, 2024•44 min
Pharmaceutical supply chains are never far from news headlines. Regular drug shortages affect our families, friends, and neighbors when they can’t access their chemotherapy treatments, ADHD medication, and pain medication - just to name a few. In 2023, Americans spent over $600 Billion on prescription drugs. That’s more than ever before — and more than any other country in the world. 90 percent of the prescriptions are for generic drugs, although they represent only 20 percent of spending. Pharm...
May 30, 2024•19 min
Some corporations have chosen to wade into socially sensitive waters over the last few years and others have been pushed in from behind. The adoption of a social mission or set of causes at the company level does not guarantee ‘trickle down’ benefits to individual employees. The right to free speech is one of the most valued privileges granted in the United States. But it has limitations - something 50 (now former) Google employees discovered the hard way last month. In this week’s episode of Ar...
May 23, 2024•22 min
On April 9th, Rene Haas, CEO of Arm Holdings, a British semiconductor and software design company came out and made a statement about data center energy consumption that most people would find shocking. He said, “by the end of the decade, AI data centers could consume as much as 20% to 25% of U.S. power requirements. Today that’s probably 4% or less.” Everyone wants to talk about AI, but this reality is something we don’t discuss nearly enough. AI may be the greatest unrecognized threat to the e...
May 09, 2024•27 min
“We know what matters to our employees, and we know what matters to our customers, and we know where the leadership view is. That alignment means that you make progress more easily because you’re focused on stuff that matters and that people care about.” - Gareth Hughes is the Business Services and ESG Director for Whistl If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say, what is the road to sustainability paved with? Put another way - if the road you are journeying down is lined wi...
May 02, 2024•39 min
Heavy-duty trucks include tractor-trailers, ambulances, garbage trucks, and school buses. All of these are now on an official timeline for reduced emissions, in alignment with a new Federal mandate. Manufacturers of heavy-duty vehicles must reduce their overall emissions by mandated percentages according to model year, starting with their 2028 models and extending through 2032. When the rules were released on March 29th, we heard the usual responses from the usual cast of characters. Environment...
Apr 25, 2024•24 min
80 percent of all ship-to-shore (S2S) cranes at ports in the United States - and 75 percent of all S2S cranes in the world - are made by just one company: ZPMC. Short for Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company Limited, ZPMC is a Chinese state-owned manufacturing and engineering firm. It was founded in 1992 and quickly grew to become the largest S2S crane manufacturer in the world. U.S.-China relations have been on shaky footing in recent times, making concerns about these cranes, and the crit...
Apr 18, 2024•16 min
On February 28, 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued JBS, the largest meat company in the world, for civil fraud. James is accusing the company of ‘greenwashing’ or making statements to sound more environmentally friendly than they truly are. In 2021, JBS made a commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2040. James says this statement is “unsubstantiated” and “unachievable” without reducing production, and that their marketing campaigns “in effect, provide environmentally conscious...
Apr 11, 2024•22 min
“China’s supply chain has gone through significant, transformative changes in the last five years. For executives or engineers, designers or buyers, who have not been here since before COVID, they’re going to see a completely different China.” - Jeffrey Goldstein , Founder & President of Onward Global It is impossible to discuss global supply chains without being hyper aware of the role of China. Whether it is their access to critical raw materials, specialization in certain production processes...
Apr 04, 2024•45 min
In October of 2021, Hertz announced that they would purchase 100,000 Tesla Model 3’s for their rental fleet, followed by 175,000 from GM, and 65,000 from Polestar. The move was supposed to help them overcome shortages of conventional cars, lend the recently ex-bankrupt company a ‘cool factor,’ and lean on the sustainability trend to drive revenue. Instead, it backfired. On April 1, 2024, Hertz will get their fifth CEO in four years. How could this strategy, one that seemed to be in alignment wit...
Mar 28, 2024•22 min
The global off-price apparel and home fashion market is estimated to be worth $900 Billion. While retailers like Macy’s and Bed Bath & Beyond faltered or fell over the last few years, the chains owned by TJX - notably TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods - have thrived. TJX has seized the opportunity to snatch up excess brand name inventory and sell it at a discount over the last few years, but their growth is not a COVID-related fluke. The foundation for their success was laid decades ago, and co...
Mar 21, 2024•21 min
In early February, news hit that there was a problem with the new Major League Baseball uniforms. Redesigned by Nike and made by Fanatics, the new uniforms were unveiled with tremendous fanfare. They were designed to be more comfortable, cooler, and better at moisture wicking. Unfortunately, one man’s breathable is another man’s translucent. Pictures started to appear on social media that revealed far more than anyone would want. The LEAST of the players’ concerns was that tucked in jerseys were...
Mar 14, 2024•25 min
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…” - President Theodore Roosevelt , 1910 The last four years of supply chain challenges have taken a toll. People are exhausted, stressed, and scarred. Unlike many areas of life that have gone back to ‘normal,’ supply chains continue to be batted about by geopolitical strife, the economy, and li...
Mar 07, 2024•42 min
“Wisdom is given equally to everybody. The point is whether one can exercise it.” - Taiichi Ohno, The “Ten Precepts” The supply chain profession has recently run the gauntlet of existential challenges. Is it possible that - given enough time - they could return to the old ways? There have recently been a number of news stories about retailers returning to just-in-time inventory management. If that is the case, and supply chains are returning to pre-pandemic practices with minimal changes, then w...
Feb 29, 2024•24 min
On February 2, 2024, news broke on one of the court cases we’ve been following for a while. In May of 2023, two of the companies owned by Byron Allen, a black businessman and producer, sued McDonald’s for $100 Million in California for fraud and false promise. The suit claimed the company lied when it said it was going to spend more money with black-owned media companies. California Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recana dismissed the case against McDonald’s and ordered Allen to pay their legal fee...
Feb 22, 2024•20 min
In today’s digital age, jokes are often made at technology’s expense. Computers don’t like switching from one virtual meeting platform to another. Sometimes webinar platforms insist upon seeing someone’s earbuds as a microphone rather than as a speaker. And why does software always need to update when we are already 5 minutes late for a meeting? Digital gremlins have become the tie that binds, and we are all conditioned to be patient, recognizing that nothing - least of all software - is perfect...
Feb 15, 2024•20 min
