May 8, 2017 This past weekend, my APICS (premier association for supply chain and operations professionals) Inland Empire chapter had its spring executive panel and networking symposium on the topic of "Disruptive Innovations in Logistics". We had an amazing panel of experts covering trucking, rail, import/ export, distribution and [...]
April 27, 2017 According to the Southern California Logistics & Supply Chain Summit featuring executives from Amazon, UPS, the California Trucking Association and more, supply chain has a dramatic impact on the Southern California economy and the world. For example, UPS is the 9th largest airline, has 100,000 trucks, [...]
April 19, 2017 According to the Material Handling & Logistics, robots are slashing U.S. wages and worsening pay inequality. That is certainly a provocative statement! According to new research by MIT's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo, one additional robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio [...]
April 12, 2017 According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump met with chief executives and promised pleasant surprises with NAFTA and talked about upgrading the federal government's computer systems. According to the chief executives in attendance, innovative ideas emerged. I would love to be a fly on the wall in [...]
April 6, 2017 According to the Wall Street Journal, the US gained a better-than-expected 263,000 jobs in March. Thus, the stock market surged and others gained as well including the Shanghai Composite Index, Nikkei Stock Average and Australia's S&P. As the job market gets tighter, have you thought about how to [...]
March 28, 2017 According to Industry Week and the Reshoring Initiative, after two decades of job losses, we have turned the corner. In 2014, we had a net gain of 10,000 reshored jobs. And, clearly, this is picking up steam especially as we are in the thick of 2017. [...]
March 22, 2017 According to CFO, Duke University and CFO Global Business Outlook Survey suggests strong optimism! In fact, the survey's optimism index for the quarter jumped to 69 (on a 100-point scale) which is the highest level in 14 years. This is also significantly higher than the long-run [...]
March 14, 2017 According to Industry Week, the Fed's survey of the economy expressed optimism; however, it also noted that labor markets are tightening. Since I'm also embarking on refrehsing my 2013 Skills Gap research report, thus far, I've noted the same concerns for high-skilled positions. I hear far [...]
March 7, 2017 Well, let's start with a definition of digitization. According to CIO.com, McKinsey defines it as technologies that virtualize and automate products, services and supply chains. We certainly hear about digitization in the news frequently; however, according to McKinsey, even though CIOs embrace it, digitization is a [...]
February 27, 2017 Trump has proposed a rather dramatic increase in defense spending. His proposed $20 billion boost in military spending isn't pocket change and will have a dramatic ripple effect on manufacturers across-the-board. It doesn't matter what gets approved in the end - the direction is clear. How [...]
