Art van Bodegraven was, among other roles, chief design officer for the DES Leadership Academy. He passed away on June 18, 2017. He will be greatly missed.
For the last couple of years now, a concept called on-demand supply chain management has been rattling around the business. But what does it mean? Is it about physical supply chain management? Is it about information systems? Or is on-demand an invented term to superficially differentiate service offerings in the marketplace?
Two principal schools claim the on-demand domain, and they are radically different. One, led by IBM, stakes out its territory in the realm of supply chain operations and the development of ondemand businesses. The other promotes "on-demand" supply chain management software, with GSX, Mitrix, and Kinaxis among the leading early providers. More new entrants in the on-demand derby pop up every day, it seems. The software is typically accessed through the Internet, with costs based on usage, rather than on the traditional license-and-maintain model.
Aberdeen Group, the respected research organization, has chosen the software path and has reported positive developments in the use of what it calls software-as-a-service (SaaS). Its position is that early adopters of on-demand supply chain software are also early beneficiaries of lower costs, faster implementations, and quicker returns on investment (ROI).
In fact, Aberdeen reports that over half of its survey population is considering on-demand applications for at least a part of their total supply chain management suite. It also says that companies can be up and running with on-demand software in as little as three months and realize an ROI in less than a year—all at a significantly lower total cost when compared to the traditional model.
Current on-demand solutions are not expected to replace traditional applications, but they may be finding favor with small and mid-sized businesses by bringing them into a milieu in which only larger companies could previously afford to play. According to Aberdeen, functions currently available include forecasting, customer inventory management, supply chain visibility, and transportation management in customer- and supplier-facing applications.
But what does it do?
The software developers appear to have a somewhat grander view of their landscape than the consulting community does. Each seems to define on-demand supply chain management to fit the limitations of its particular product sets. And it takes a close reading of the developers' materials to work through the extravagant language and ferret out what the software really does.
One firm promotes its product as "revolutionary" and a "first-ever," with "critical functionality." The core premise is the creation of trading communities and the provision of information about inventory availability, inbound shipments and open purchase orders, outbound sales orders, forecasts, and target inventory quantities.
Another software and services provider focuses its on-demand supply chain management solutions on business-to-business cross-enterprise process coordination and simplification. Apparently aimed at somewhat larger companies, its products typically support demand planning, product development, and marketing and sales.
A third provider takes another tack, concentrating on support for supply chain agility, with a manufacturing focus. The high spots include real-time visibility into systems throughout the supply chain, alert and event management capability, change-impact analysis, what-if analysis, and collaborative scorecarding. The vendor is clearly positioning this product for decision support in a rapid-response world.
The point is that even when dealing solely with software, we do not have uniform definitions of ondemand
supply chain management. Then, there's the operational
perspective.
Big Blue speaks
If IBM were just another small consultancy, it would be easy to dismiss its position and concentrate on the software aspects of on-demand supply chain management. But it's not. With an army of thousands of consultants and an enormous marketing budget, IBM cannot be ignored.
IBM has been promoting the concept and language of ondemand business for some time now. Even if it is merely marketing hyperbole, it is powerful: IBM contends that the process of energizing the supply chain is the key to enabling the on-demand business—transforming the base model for sustained, and sustainable, competitive advantage.
Its 2006 CEO survey showed responsiveness to be the number two issue, after growth. Eighty percent of the respondents rated their companies as "less than capable" in responding to changing conditions and supply chain events. That assessment is interesting in light of the attention given to the subject of agility in recent years (to say nothing of Yossi Sheffi's wake-up call of a book, The Resilient Enterprise.)
IBM has focused on responsiveness and the on-demand concept after recognizing the impacts of major business trends, including increasingly demanding customers; shrinking product life cycles, with innovation and speed to market as make-or-break factors; supply chain complexity, including globalization; physically extended supply chains involving more players; prevalence of e-business techniques and transactions; and unrelenting pressure for cost cutting.
Its vision for on-demand supply chains embraces four key capabilities:
Dynamic—and fast—response to events and changing conditions
Open architecture systems infrastructure, with realtime visibility throughout the supply chain
Adaptability to seize market opportunities quickly
Variable cost sensitivity, moving up or down, based on revenue.
A fifth element may be the development of sense-andrespond
capability to monitor and manage exceptions as
well as to respond to—or even influence—demand shifts.
Other features of the on-demand supply chain from this operational perspective include online and real-time order configuration, updates, and status; scalable infrastructure; dynamic product/service bundling; and tight integration with supply chain partners in the areas of technology, communications, information, and planning.
Of course, IBM's process for determining where a company is, relative to on-demand status, and what it has to do to move up the scale is designed to generate any number of consulting projects. That is to be expected.
In IBM's view, the on-demand supply chain and the ondemand business are the next steps in the evolution of enterprises, taking the flexible and collaborative business to another level of technology-enabled integration. It argues—emphatically—that, ultimately, on-demand is not an option, but a necessity.
How we see it
On-demand supply chain management is here to stay, no matter how it is defined or what it is called. On the software side, we appreciate the continuing development of better and better tools made available to broader markets.
On the physical side, the concepts IBM espouses are both solid and indicative of the direction that our supply chain world needs to travel. No matter that the concepts are being used to provide gainful occupation for all those consultants; that doesn't mean that they're wrong.
Whether all of us will include on-demand supply chain management in our professional vocabularies remains to be seen. We're reasonably sure that we'll be using the concepts and the tools in some form or another.
States across the Southeast woke up today to find that the immediate weather impacts from Hurricane Helene are done, but the impacts to people, businesses, and the supply chain continue to be a major headache, according to Everstream Analytics.
The primary problem is the collection of massive power outages caused by the storm’s punishing winds and rainfall, now affecting some 2 million customers across the Southeast region of the U.S.
One organization working to rush help to affected regions since the storm hit Florida’s western coast on Thursday night is the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). As it does after most serious storms, the group continues to marshal donated resources from supply chain service providers in order to store, stage, and deliver help where it’s needed.
Support for recovery efforts is coming from a massive injection of federal aid, since the White House declared states of emergency last week for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Affected states are also supporting the rush of materials to needed zones by suspending transportation requirement such as certain licensing agreements, fuel taxes, weight restrictions, and hours of service caps, ALAN said.
E-commerce activity remains robust, but a growing number of consumers are reintegrating physical stores into their shopping journeys in 2024, emphasizing the need for retailers to focus on omnichannel business strategies. That’s according to an e-commerce study from Ryder System, Inc., released this week.
Ryder surveyed more than 1,300 consumers for its 2024 E-Commerce Consumer Study and found that 61% of consumers shop in-store “because they enjoy the experience,” a 21% increase compared to results from Ryder’s 2023 survey on the same subject. The current survey also found that 35% shop in-store because they don’t want to wait for online orders in the mail (up 4% from last year), and 15% say they shop in-store to avoid package theft (up 8% from last year).
“Retail and e-commerce continue to evolve,” Jeff Wolpov, Ryder’s senior vice president of e-commerce, said in a statement announcing the survey’s findings. “The emergence of e-commerce and growth of omnichannel fulfillment, particularly over the past four years, has altered consumer expectations and behavior dramatically and will continue to do so as time and technology allow.
“This latest study demonstrates that, while consumers maintain a robust
appetite for e-commerce, they are simultaneously embracing in-person shopping, presenting an impetus for merchants to refine their omnichannel strategies.”
Other findings include:
• Apparel and cosmetics shoppers show growing attraction to buying in-store. When purchasing apparel and cosmetics, shoppers are more inclined to make purchases in a physical location than they were last year, according to Ryder. Forty-one percent of shoppers who buy cosmetics said they prefer to do so either in a brand’s physical retail location or a department/convenience store (+9%). As for apparel shoppers, 54% said they prefer to buy clothing in those same brick-and-mortar locations (+9%).
• More customers prefer returning online purchases in physical stores. Fifty-five percent of shoppers (+15%) now say they would rather return online purchases in-store–the first time since early 2020 the preference to Buy Online Return In-Store (BORIS) has outweighed returning via mail, according to the survey. Forty percent of shoppers said they often make additional purchases when picking up or returning online purchases in-store (+2%).
• Consumers are extremely reliant on mobile devices when shopping in-store. This year’s survey reveals that 77% of consumers search for items on their mobile devices while in a store, Ryder said. Sixty-nine percent said they compare prices with items in nearby stores, 58% check availability at other stores, 31% want to learn more about a product, and 17% want to see other items frequently purchased with a product they’re considering.
Ryder said the findings also underscore the importance of investing in technology solutions that allow companies to provide customers with flexible purchasing options.
“Omnichannel strength is not a fad; it is a strategic necessity for e-commerce and retail businesses to stay competitive and achieve sustainable success in 2024 and beyond,” Wolpov also said. “The findings from this year’s study underscore what we know our customers are experiencing, which is the positive impact of integrating supply chain technology solutions across their sales channels, enabling them to provide their customers with flexible, convenient options to personalize their experience and heighten customer satisfaction.”
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
As the hours tick down toward a “seemingly imminent” strike by East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers, experts are warning that the impacts of that move would mushroom well-beyond the actual strike locations, causing prevalent shipping delays, container ship congestion, port congestion on West coast ports, and stranded freight.
However, a strike now seems “nearly unavoidable,” as no bargaining sessions are scheduled prior to the September 30 contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) in their negotiations over wages and automation, according to the transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.
The facilities affected would include some 45,000 port workers at 36 locations, including high-volume U.S. ports from Boston, New York / New Jersey, and Norfolk, to Savannah and Charleston, and down to New Orleans and Houston. With such widespread geography, a strike would likely lead to congestion from diverted traffic, as well as knock-on effects include the potential risk of increased freight rates and costly charges such as demurrage, detention, per diem, and dwell time fees on containers that may be slowed due to the congestion, according to an analysis by another transportation and logistics sector law firm, Benesch.
The weight of those combined blows means that many companies are already planning ways to minimize damage and recover quickly from the event. According to Scopelitis’ advice, mitigation measures could include: preparing for congestion on West coast ports, taking advantage of intermodal ground transportation where possible, looking for alternatives including air transport when necessary for urgent delivery, delaying shipping from East and Gulf coast ports until after the strike, and budgeting for increased freight and container fees.
Additional advice on softening the blow of a potential coastwide strike came from John Donigian, senior director of supply chain strategy at Moody’s. In a statement, he named six supply chain strategies for companies to consider: expedite certain shipments, reallocate existing inventory strategically, lock in alternative capacity with trucking and rail providers , communicate transparently with stakeholders to set realistic expectations for delivery timelines, shift sourcing to regional suppliers if possible, and utilize drop shipping to maintain sales.
National nonprofit Wreaths Across America (WAA) kicked off its 2024 season this week with a call for volunteers. The group, which honors U.S. military veterans through a range of civic outreach programs, is seeking trucking companies and professional drivers to help deliver wreaths to cemeteries across the country for its annual wreath-laying ceremony, December 14.
“Wreaths Across America relies on the transportation industry to move the mission. The Honor Fleet, composed of dedicated carriers, professional drivers, and other transportation partners, guarantees the delivery of millions of sponsored veterans’ wreaths to their destination each year,” Courtney George, WAA’s director of trucking and industry relations, said in a statement Tuesday. “Transportation partners benefit from driver retention and recruitment, employee engagement, positive brand exposure, and the opportunity to give back to their community’s veterans and military families.”
WAA delivers wreaths to more than 4,500 locations nationwide, and as of this week had added more than 20 loads to be delivered this season. The wreaths are donated by sponsors from across the country, delivered by truckers, and laid at the graves of veterans by WAA volunteers.
Wreaths Across America
Transportation companies interested in joining the Honor Fleet can visit the WAA website to find an open lane or contact the WAA transportation team at trucking@wreathsacrossamerica.org for more information.