Our guest on this week's episode is John Paxton, CEO of MHI. Supply chain professionals gathered just a few weeks ago in Atlanta for MODEX 2024. It is one of the most exciting stops on a professional’s calendar, as there were three large halls filled with the latest in supply chain technologies to explore. MHI is the industry trade group responsible for organizing and presenting MODEX. Paxton shares key takeaways from the show as well as discusses in detail some of the important findings from th...
Apr 12, 2024•20 min•Season 5Ep. 14
Our guest on this week's episode is Stephen Dyke, principal solution advisor at FourKites. It has been more than a week since the cargo ship Dalia struck and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Supply chain managers are working hard to adjust to limited operations at the Port of Baltimore, and shippers are shifting cargo to other ports and road networks. Our guest shares the latest from Baltimore and the current impacts to supply chains. Economic activity in the logistics industry...
Apr 05, 2024•20 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Our guest on this week's episode is Crystal Parrott, chief operating officer at Plus One Robotics. Retailers have always had to deal with seasonal peak periods. However, those fluctuating volumes make it difficult on distribution operations. But now, there are technologies that make it easier to smooth out the peaks. Our guest shares how those technologies can bring huge benefits for retail distribution. The major story we’ve been covering this week has been the collapse of the Key Bridge in Bal...
Mar 29, 2024•20 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Our guest on this week's episode is Anne-Marie Michel, a photographer based in London who has just completed a photographic book on female truckers. Women drivers make up a growing percentage of our nation’s truck operators. Michel captured the lives of these women and the special bond they share as "Sisters of the Road." This week we heard that that warehouse construction boom that resulted from Covid supply chain delays and customer demand is finally cooling off. That comes from a report from ...
Mar 22, 2024•21 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Our guest on this week's episode is Breanna Herbert, senior product manager at Orbis Corp. One way that companies can meet their sustainability goals is to transform the way they package goods. That’s where reusable packaging can help to create greener supply chains. Our guest offers some insights and also shares about packaging products that are made from recycled materials gathered from shorelines of the world's oceans. We have all seen those Amazon or UPS trucks pull right up outside our driv...
Mar 08, 2024•21 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Our guest on this week's episode is Eric Fullerton, senior director of product marketing at project44. Transportation networks continue to be disrupted by the ongoing militia attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. To counter it, most ocean carriers are rerouting goods away from the Suez Canal and extending their ocean miles by sailing around the horn of Africa. We discuss the latest and what shippers can and should be doing to counteract the effects of these ongoing supply chain constraints. New re...
Mar 01, 2024•21 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Our guest on this week's episode is Peter Latta, chairman and CEO of A. Duie Pyle, a Northeast regional trucking and logistics company. This year marks the 100th anniversary of A. Duie Pyle. Latta discusses some of the challenges his company has overcome to hit the century mark as well as issues currently facing the trucking industry. Finding workers for our nation’s warehouses has not been easy the past couple of years. But there is automation available that can help to close the warehouse labo...
Feb 23, 2024•21 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Our guest on this week's episode is Steve Ardagh, the founder and CEO of Eagle Protect , a protective glove supplier. Our supply chains contain products sourced and manufactured all over the world. But sometimes, the origins of products may not be in line with our values. Products may be produced in sweatshops, or ignore child labor standards, or they may take advantage of minority groups or even enslaved people. How do we assure ethical sourcing of the products in our supply chains? Our guest h...
Feb 16, 2024•17 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Our guest on this week's episode is Siddharth Priyesh, vice president and head of the Americas and Caribbean regions at CrimsonLogic. All businesses have been affected by increasing inflation and the high interest rates that have been set to curb that inflation. It has caused some sectors to suffer worse than others. Transportation has been one of the industries hit the hardest with higher costs. Will those impacts continue during the year, and what can businesses do to lessen the pain? Transpor...
Feb 09, 2024•18 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Our guest on this week's episode is Chris Jones, executive vice president of industry for Descartes. Unemployment rates in the United States continue to be under 4% - the latest report released today shows unemployment currently at 3.7%. The low unemployment further demonstrates the growing strength of the overall economy. However, one thing that may stifle additional growth is the difficulty of finding good workers with so few people looking for new jobs. Logistics technology company Descartes ...
Feb 02, 2024•18 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Our guest on this week's episode is Melanie Nuce-Hilton, senior vice president, innovation and partnerships, at GS1 US. The world has long used barcodes for data tracking and transactions – we see them stamped on nearly every product we buy. However, new standards are being introduced to replace the humble bar code with more sophisticated codes that can contain much more data. We talk about the benefits and use cases for the newer 2D types of barcodes. We’ve been hearing about the potential for ...
Jan 26, 2024•25 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Our guest on this week's episode is Dr. Greg Vecchi, director of training at SafeDefend LLC . Businesses are statistically among the most common places where active shootings occur, yet most businesses don’t have the security to prevent a motivated person from entering a facility and committing violent acts. Most just think it could never happen to them. However, there are actions that businesses can take to thwart or mitigate the harm caused by a would-be attacker. Vecchi is a retired FBI super...
Jan 19, 2024•29 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Our guest on this week's episode is Ian Arroyo, chief strategy officer at Freightos. Ships crossing the Red Sea are under constant threat of attacks by militant groups responding to the Israeli-Hamas conflict. The situation is constraining global trade and causing many shipping lines to bypass the Suez Canal and instead sail around Africa to reach Europe and North American destinations, resulting in huge increases in costs for shippers. Trucker Path, a developer of mobile apps and services for t...
Jan 12, 2024•19 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Our guest on this week's episode is Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics & chairman of The Futurist Institute. He is a well-known economist who regularly focuses on supply chains and creates forecasts and economic outlooks for the industry. 2023 was a rough year for most aspects of the supply chain economy. Schenker shares the economic issues that caused supply chain problems during the past year and what issues will affect supply chains in 2024. We are now past the holiday peak s...
Jan 05, 2024•25 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Our guest on this week's episode is Col. Ted Silvester USMC (Ret.) and VP, marketing & development, for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. Each year, the United States Marine Corps Reserve and its partners undertake one of the nation’s largest toy drives, Toys for Tots. The organization's goal is to assure that all children have toys for Christmas morning. It takes an army – or rather a Marine Corps - of volunteers and corporate partners to pull it off. Col. Silvester shares about the logi...
Dec 22, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 49
Our guest on this week's episode is Carson Krieg, director of global alliances at project44. With Christmas only 10 days away, we are just about to finish the busiest time of the year for the shipping industry. So, how are things going? Have we seen the snags of previous years, or is there too much capacity? Have shippers over-prepared for the season? Our guest has some insights. New employees are most vulnerable to workplace accidents. New research from Travelers shows that a third of workplace...
Dec 15, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 48
Our guest on this week's episode is Chirag Modi, corporate VP of industry strategy at Blue Yonder. Last week the Biden administration unveiled more plans to strengthen our domestic supply chains, with the goals of making them more resilient. Our guest shares some details on these initiatives and how they may impact our supply chains. Economic activity in the logistics industry fell in November following three months of steady increases; that’s according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index re...
Dec 08, 2023•17 min•Season 4Ep. 47
Our guest on this week's episode is Matthew Hart, founder and CEO of Soter Analytics. This is the season of gift giving. And many of those gifts are online retail orders that have to be delivered by parcel carriers. Along with increasing volumes comes the risk of more injuries to delivery workers, especially among part-time or seasonal workers not used to increased physical activity. How can these potential injuries be prevented? Our guest offers some insight on protecting workers while keeping ...
Dec 01, 2023•18 min•Season 4Ep. 46
Our guest on this week's episode is Liz Richards, the soon-to-be retiring CEO of MHEDA, the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association - an organization that helps distributors and their customers in finding the right material handling solutions for meeting today’s distribution challenges. She has led MHEDA for nearly 29 years and will retire at the end of the year. We talk about the changes she has seen in the industry and what the future may hold for MHEDA. It has been a challenging ...
Nov 24, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 45
Our guest on this week's episode is Duane Duhamel, Director of Health, Safety and Environment at ISN , a provider of contractor and supplier management solutions. OSHA recently released its list of top 10 safety violations. Of course, the violations mean that some things are not being done safely in the workplace – and many of the most common violations occur in transportation and warehouses. We look at what those violations are, why they happen, and what can be done to better assure safety with...
Nov 17, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 44
Our guest on this week's episode is Evan Dexter, vice president, rental product management at Ryder System, Inc. Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, a day we remember our military families and the important work they do to safeguard all of us. One of the ways our industry helps to support our troops is through programs designed to transition veterans into logistics jobs. We hear how Dexter made that transition himself and how his company works to bring other vets into the logistics industry. New laws in ...
Nov 10, 2023•19 min•Season 4Ep. 43
Our guest on this week's episode is Art Eldred, vice president and growth officer at Vargo, a systems integrator. Automation is increasingly an answer for distribution facilities that need to fulfill a growing number of orders, but can’t find enough workers. Automated storage and retrieval systems are one of the tried and true technologies that are finding more applications in today’s warehouses. We discuss their benefits and use cases. The National Retail Federation has released is annual proje...
Nov 03, 2023•22 min•Season 4Ep. 42
Our guest on this week's episode is Chris Grossman, c hief commercial officer of Spectaire. It is often said that as California goes, so goes the nation, as other states tend to follow the regulations that the Golden State adopts. Recently there was a new agreement between the state and original equipment manufacturers on California emissions programs that may affect transportation nationwide. The difficult thing is that there seems to be a gap between measuring emissions and calculating emissio...
Oct 27, 2023•18 min•Season 4Ep. 41
Our guest on this week's episode is Sunderesh S. Heragu, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma State University. The world is still in shock over the ongoing devastation happening in Israel and Gaza. In addition to the human tragedies, there are also economic and supply chain impacts to the ongoing conflict. Our guest shares his expertise on how supply chains in the region are being affected. New federal funding for reducin...
Oct 20, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Our guest on this week's episode is Tracey Bellamy, chief engineering officer at Telgian Engineering and Consulting, a firm that specializes in fire prevention. October is fire prevention month. Most supply chain companies have facilities that they must protect from potential fires and other hazards. But fire codes vary widely from city to city and the codes have not kept up with newer material handling technologies as well as new stored products made from plastic compounds that have been introd...
Oct 13, 2023•21 min•Season 4Ep. 39
Our guest on this week's episode is Jeannie Carpenter, senior director of global logistics at Jabil. Most supply chain managers aim to design their networks to be efficient at the lowest possible cost. But they also want to make good decisions that will help reduce their supply chain’s impact on the environment. Today's guest explains that those objectives don’t have to be mutually exclusive. New research is out that shows how company culture affects employee performance. A company's culture can...
Oct 06, 2023•20 min•Season 4Ep. 38
Our guest on this week's episode is Pawan Joshi, executive vice president, product management & strategy at E2open. With the rebound in air travel, there are more flights available now to shippers, including cargo-only flights and belly space on passenger planes. How can shippers take advantage of that extra capacity and the lower rates now available? We’ve seen a lot of advances in robots that move inventory around the warehouse in recent years. But one problem that has remained really hard...
Sep 29, 2023•23 min•Season 4Ep. 37
Our guest on this week's episode is Spencer Shute, principal consultant at Proxima, a company that provides procurement services. While negotiations are ongoing, the strike by the United Auto Workers against the big three automakers is entering its second week and may expand to other plants. Of course, the longer this goes on, the more it affects supply chains. Shute discusses the current state of the labor dispute, what may happen next, and how supply chains may be impacted. Artificial intellig...
Sep 22, 2023•18 min•Season 4Ep. 36
Our guest on this week's episode is retired materials handling executive Mike Kotecki. He has just written a new book, Leadership for Engineers: How to Turn Perfectly Good STEM Professionals into Management . Kotecki was formerly an executive with HK Systems and Dematic. He discusses his personal journey into management and how STEM professionals have many of the tools needed to become good industry leaders. He also shares tips for helping them to fill gaps they may have in their backgrounds and...
Sep 15, 2023•22 min•Season 4Ep. 35
Our guest on this week's episode is Don Hicks, CEO of Optilogic. As manufacturing is declining in China, many companies are turning to Mexico and other Latin American countries to assure a steady supply of goods while also shortening their supply chains. But will nearshoring actually resolve many of the problems supply chains have faced in the past few years? We discuss the benefits and pitfalls of nearshoring designs. Freight brokers are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel – and there is...
Sep 08, 2023•22 min•Season 4Ep. 34
