When disaster strikes, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort aims to be on the spot ready to treat patients within five days. An innovative supply chain strategy makes it all work.
Steve Geary is adjunct faculty at the University of Tennessee's Haaslam College of Business and is a lecturer at The Gordon Institute at Tufts University. He is the President of the Supply Chain Visions family of companies, consultancies that work across the government sector. Steve is a contributing editor at DC Velocity, and editor-at-large for CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly.
When disaster hits, the world mobilizes. And so it was after a devastating earthquake shook Haiti in January 2010. Among the responders that rushed to the scene was the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort. A full-service hospital ship, the Comfort provides acute medical and surgical care for the sick and injured, whether deployed military forces or victims of disaster.
With 12 operating rooms, an intensive care ward, medical labs, capacity for 1,000 patient beds, and a flight deck able to handle the largest military helicopters, the vessel is uniquely equipped to treat patients like the earthquake victims. What it did not have at the time of the earthquake, however, was the vast quantity of medical and surgical supplies—more than 5,000 lines—its medical personnel would need when the ship reached the island.
That was no cause for concern. As soon as the call went out, a complex network of suppliers swung into action. Within 36 hours, an array of medical supplies had been delivered to the Comfort at its berth in Baltimore. Within 72 hours of its activation, the ship set sail from Baltimore. En route south, the vessel made a call in Norfolk, Va., to pick up additional crew and supplies. Within seven days, the ship was anchored off the coast of Haiti, fully supplied and staffed and providing medical care.
As remarkable as that might seem, it's hardly a unique occurrence. In fact, this kind of rapid response is close to standard operating procedure for the Comfort and its sister ship, the San Diego-based Mercy. Thanks to a supply chain strategy developed over the past decade by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the ships are able to move quickly from a state of "reduced operations" (skeleton crew, no medicines, limited medical supplies) to "ready to sail." The goal is when the call comes—whether it's to respond to a natural disaster or sail to the Persian Gulf to serve as a floating trauma unit—to be operational within five days. She often does it faster.
Comfort at sea
The Comfort has been busy over the past decade. On the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, the Comfort was activated in response to the attack on the World Trade Center, arriving pier side in Manhattan on Sept. 14. Since then, it has embarked on a variety of missions:
In June of 2003, the Comfort deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
On Sept. 2, 2005, after only two days of preparation, the Comfort sailed to assist in Gulf Coast recovery efforts after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
On Jan. 13, 2010, the Comfort was ordered to assist in the humanitarian relief efforts following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
In March 2011, the Comfort set sail on a five-month goodwill mission to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.
Mission nearly impossible
To understand the challenges of supplying the Comfort, it helps to know a little about the scale of the operation. The vessel, which was converted from a Panamax-class oil tanker to a Navy hospital ship in 1987, measures nearly 900 feet long and over 100 feet wide—the equivalent of a little more than two and a half football fields in length and a couple of basketball courts in width. If either the Comfort or the Mercy were relocated to land, it would make the list of the 25 largest hospitals in the United States. Send them together to support a mission, and they jointly are larger than all but a handful of hospitals in the world.
Supplying any hospital of that size—and doing it on short notice—might seem supply chain challenge enough. But in this case, the picture is complicated by the wide variation in mission profiles. The supplies required by a hospital that's caring for a military force during wartime are far different from the supplies needed for a humanitarian mission. Furthermore, not all humanitarian missions are alike—the medications and supplies needed to treat patients in the aftermath of an earthquake are not the same as those needed following a disaster like Hurricane Katrina.
For an example of the difficulty of forecasting supply needs, you need look no further than the Haitian earthquake. Injuries caused by collapsing buildings and falling debris led to unusually high demand for orthopedic devices used for treating traumatic bone fractures, which normally make up only a fraction of the supplies stocked by the Comfort. In that case, the DLA processed orders for more than 1,000 lines of orthopedic items and managed to have most of them delivered to the Comfort within five days, either in Baltimore or Norfolk. The remaining items were flown to the ship in Haiti, using the supplier's corporate aircraft.
Taking a different approach
So how do you configure a supply chain network to respond to the needs of one of the world's largest hospitals with no more than five days' notice of what supplies will be needed? That's been the ongoing challenge for the DLA's Troop Support organization in Philadelphia and, in particular, its Medical Supply Chain team.
Initially, the group followed standard stocking practice—that is, buying enough of everything it thought it might need and putting it on a shelf. Trouble was, that tended to cost a lot of money. On top of that, shelf inventories, particularly medicines, have expiration issues, and there's always the cost of maintaining storage facilities. About 10 years ago, it realized it needed to find a better way.
The task of devising a new process fell to the Medical Supply Chain team's Readiness Division. After a thorough review of the process, the team came up with a whole new approach to supporting the Comfort. Their strategy? Deliver readiness, not product.
Essentially, the DLA now contracts with suppliers not for specific goods, but for a guarantee of the goods' availability.
In practice, that means that each year, the Readiness Division invests over $30 million across 59 "contingency contracts." For this investment, the DLA receives no product. Instead, it receives a guarantee of five-day availability (and sometimes faster), on demand, from its network of commercial suppliers. This investment gives DLA the right to quick-turn delivery for almost $700 million worth of medical products.
In financial terms, what the division gets for its $30 million is a call option. It has the right to exercise a delivery contract and pay for the items, using pre-negotiated unit pricing, at the time of delivery. Or as Mike Medora, chief of the Troop Support medical contingency contracting team, puts it, "We pay for access to the material."
Another way to look at it is that for its annual $30 million, DLA Troop Support is able to tap the most sophisticated medical supply chain in the world, on demand. The DLA never even touches the material. Suppliers are responsible for everything from product freshness to storage, and because they deliver directly to the Comfort and the **ital{Mercy, the agency doesn't even have to maintain its own distribution network.
Take pharmaceuticals, for example. The DLA has a prime vendor contract with Cardinal Health, under which Cardinal agrees to make available within 72 hours a specified list of pharmaceutical products to support a 1,000-bed activation. When it needs to supply the Comfort, Cardinal simply draws on the resources of its 23-center distribution network, according to Theo Wilson, Cardinal Health's vice president of government sales. "We can move product around to support any activation," he says.
Meeting the DLA's fast-turnaround requirement can be challenging, Wilson admits. But workers need little encouragement once they learn where the orders are headed, he says. "It's not hard to motivate people to get it done."
It also helps that Cardinal has a distribution center not far from the Comfort's berth in Baltimore. "After Katrina, we didn't wait the 72 hours that DLA gives us," Wilson says. "We had product there in 24 hours."
Plan and adjust
Along with rethinking the nature of the contracts it places with commercial suppliers, DLA Troop Support's Readiness Division is redefining its own business processes to boost preparedness. For example, it has compiled a cross-referenced list of standard-use medical items from all the services. It has also upgraded its computer systems so that orders can flow without human intervention directly to the suppliers.
That list of "standard" items grows almost daily. The number of surgical items in the catalog is approaching 75,000 SKUs, including almost 2,000 pharmaceutical items. To put these numbers in perspective, a typical supermarket assortment is about 40,000 items. The catalog has developed over time based on experience across the military. "We've been working with the military services for years," says Linda Grugan, a contracting officer in the pharmaceutical prime vendor division at DLA.
In a perfect world, orders would automatically release, supply would flow, and DLA could just sit back and watch once the activation order went out. However, every contingency is different, as the Haiti deployment shows, and that's when the Medical Supply Chain team steps in to tailor supplies to the specific need.
Wilson talks about the improvisation across the supplier base that makes this sort of response possible. "We don't wait. If we see that there is a natural disaster or an emerging contingency, we move. We're in constant contact with Linda Grugan at Troop Support. We're leaning forward, constantly preparing, based on what we see happening in the world. We understand the urgency."
Jackie Basquill, a supervisor in the Medical Supply Chain who works directly with the Comfort, echoes Wilson's observation. "It's a great set of relationships, and when there is a need, we just find a way to make it happen."
Most of the apparel sold in North America is manufactured in Asia, meaning the finished goods travel long distances to reach end markets, with all the associated greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, apparel manufacturing itself requires a significant amount of energy, water, and raw materials like cotton. Overall, the production of apparel is responsible for about 2% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report titled
Taking Stock of Progress Against the Roadmap to Net Zeroby the Apparel Impact Institute. Founded in 2017, the Apparel Impact Institute is an organization dedicated to identifying, funding, and then scaling solutions aimed at reducing the carbon emissions and other environmental impacts of the apparel and textile industries.
The author of this annual study is researcher and consultant Michael Sadowski. He wrote the first report in 2021 as well as the latest edition, which was released earlier this year. Sadowski, who is also executive director of the environmental nonprofit
The Circulate Initiative, recently joined DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney on an episode of the “Logistics Matters” podcast to discuss the key findings of the research, what companies are doing to reduce emissions, and the progress they’ve made since the first report was issued.
A: While companies in the apparel industry can set their own sustainability targets, we realized there was a need to give them a blueprint for actually reducing emissions. And so, we produced the first report back in 2021, where we laid out the emissions from the sector, based on the best estimates [we could make using] data from various sources. It gives companies and the sector a blueprint for what we collectively need to do to drive toward the ambitious reduction [target] of staying within a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway. That was the first report, and then we committed to refresh the analysis on an annual basis. The second report was published last year, and the third report came out in May of this year.
Q: What were some of the key findings of your research?
A: We found that about half of the emissions in the sector come from Tier Two, which is essentially textile production. That includes the knitting, weaving, dyeing, and finishing of fabric, which together account for over half of the total emissions. That was a really important finding, and it allows us to focus our attention on the interventions that can drive those emissions down.
Raw material production accounts for another quarter of emissions. That includes cotton farming, extracting gas and oil from the ground to make synthetics, and things like that. So we now have a really keen understanding of the source of our industry’s emissions.
Q: Your report mentions that the apparel industry is responsible for about 2% of global emissions. Is that an accurate statistic?
A: That’s our best estimate of the total emissions [generated by] the apparel sector. Some other reports on the industry have apparel at up to 8% of global emissions. And there is a commonly misquoted number in the media that it’s 10%. From my perspective, I think the best estimate is somewhere under 2%.
We know that globally, humankind needs to reduce emissions by roughly half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 to hit international goals. [Reaching that target will require the involvement of] every facet of the global economy and every aspect of the apparel sector—transportation, material production, manufacturing, cotton farming. Through our work and that of others, I think the apparel sector understands what has to happen. We have highlighted examples of how companies are taking action to reduce emissions in the roadmap reports.
Q: What are some of those actions the industry can take to reduce emissions?
A: I think one of the positive developments since we wrote the first report is that we’re seeing companies really focus on the most impactful areas. We see companies diving deep on thermal energy, for example. With respect to Tier Two, we [focus] a lot of attention on things like ocean freight versus air. There’s a rule of thumb I’ve heard that indicates air freight is about 10 times the cost [of ocean] and also produces 10 times more greenhouse gas emissions.
There is money available to invest in sustainability efforts. It’s really exciting to see the funding that’s coming through for AI [artificial intelligence] and to see that individual companies, such as H&M and Lululemon, are investing in real solutions in their supply chains. I think a lot of concrete actions are being taken.
And yet we know that reducing emissions by half on an absolute basis by 2030 is a monumental undertaking. So I don’t want to be overly optimistic, because I think we have a lot of work to do. But I do think we’ve got some amazing progress happening.
Q: You mentioned several companies that are starting to address their emissions. Is that a result of their being more aware of the emissions they generate? Have you seen progress made since the first report came out in 2021?
A: Yes. When we published the first roadmap back in 2021, our statistics showed that only about 12 companies had met the criteria [for setting] science-based targets. In 2024, the number of apparel, textile, and footwear companies that have set targets or have commitments to set targets is close to 500. It’s an enormous increase. I think they see the urgency more than other sectors do.
We have companies that have been working at sustainability for quite a long time. I think the apparel sector has developed a keen understanding of the impacts of climate change. You can see the impacts of flooding, drought, heat, and other things happening in places like Bangladesh and Pakistan and India. If you’re a brand or a manufacturer and you have operations and supply chains in these places, I think you understand what the future will look like if we don’t significantly reduce emissions.
Q: There are different categories of emission levels, depending on the role within the supply chain. Scope 1 are “direct” emissions under the reporting company’s control. For apparel, this might be the production of raw materials or the manufacturing of the finished product. Scope 2 covers “indirect” emissions from purchased energy, such as electricity used in these processes. Scope 3 emissions are harder to track, as they include emissions from supply chain partners both upstream and downstream.
Now companies are finding there are legislative efforts around the world that could soon require them to track and report on all these emissions, including emissions produced by their partners’ supply chains. Does this mean that companies now need to be more aware of not only what greenhouse gas emissions they produce, but also what their partners produce?
A: That’s right. Just to put this into context, if you’re a brand like an Adidas or a Gap, you still have to consider the Scope 3 emissions. In particular, there are the so-called “purchased goods and services,” which refers to all of the embedded emissions in your products, from farming cotton to knitting yarn to making fabric. Those “purchased goods and services” generally account for well above 80% of the total emissions associated with a product. It’s by far the most significant portion of your emissions.
Leading companies have begun measuring and taking action on Scope 3 emissions because of regulatory developments in Europe and, to some extent now, in California. I do think this is just a further tailwind for the work that the industry is doing.
I also think it will definitely ratchet up the quality requirements of Scope 3 data, which is not yet where we’d all like it to be. Companies are working to improve that data, but I think the regulatory push will make the quality side increasingly important.
Q: Overall, do you think the work being done by the Apparel Impact Institute will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the industry?
A: When we started this back in 2020, we were at a place where companies were setting targets and knew their intended destination, but what they needed was a blueprint for how to get there. And so, the roadmap [provided] this blueprint and identified six key things that the sector needed to do—from using more sustainable materials to deploying renewable electricity in the supply chain.
Decarbonizing any sector, whether it’s transportation, chemicals, or automotive, requires investment. The Apparel Impact Institute is bringing collective investment, which is so critical. I’m really optimistic about what they’re doing. They have taken a data-driven, evidence-based approach, so they know where the emissions are and they know what the needed interventions are. And they’ve got the industry behind them in doing that.
The global air cargo market’s hot summer of double-digit demand growth continued in August with average spot rates showing their largest year-on-year jump with a 24% increase, according to the latest weekly analysis by Xeneta.
Xeneta cited two reasons to explain the increase. First, Global average air cargo spot rates reached $2.68 per kg in August due to continuing supply and demand imbalance. That came as August's global cargo supply grew at its slowest ratio in 2024 to-date at 2% year-on-year, while global cargo demand continued its double-digit growth, rising +11%.
The second reason for higher rates was an ocean-to-air shift in freight volumes due to Red Sea disruptions and e-commerce demand.
Those factors could soon be amplified as e-commerce shows continued strong growth approaching the hotly anticipated winter peak season. E-commerce and low-value goods exports from China in the first seven months of 2024 increased 30% year-on-year, including shipments to Europe and the US rising 38% and 30% growth respectively, Xeneta said.
“Typically, air cargo market performance in August tends to follow the July trend. But another month of double-digit demand growth and the strongest rate growths of the year means there was definitely no summer slack season in 2024,” Niall van de Wouw, Xeneta’s chief airfreight officer, said in a release.
“Rates we saw bottoming out in late July started picking up again in mid-August. This is too short a period to call a season. This has been a busy summer, and now we’re at the threshold of Q4, it will be interesting to see what will happen and if all the anticipation of a red-hot peak season materializes,” van de Wouw said.
The report cites data showing that there are approximately 1.7 million workers missing from the post-pandemic workforce and that 38% of small firms are unable to fill open positions. At the same time, the “skills gap” in the workforce is accelerating as automation and AI create significant shifts in how work is performed.
That information comes from the “2024 Labor Day Report” released by Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI), the firm’s government relations and public policy arm.
“We continue to see a labor shortage and an urgent need to upskill the current workforce to adapt to the new world of work,” said Michael Lotito, Littler shareholder and co-chair of WPI. “As corporate executives and business leaders look to the future, they are focused on realizing the many benefits of AI to streamline operations and guide strategic decision-making, while cultivating a talent pipeline that can support this growth.”
But while the need is clear, solutions may be complicated by public policy changes such as the upcoming U.S. general election and the proliferation of employment-related legislation at the state and local levels amid Congressional gridlock.
“We are heading into a contentious election that has already proven to be unpredictable and is poised to create even more uncertainty for employers, no matter the outcome,” Shannon Meade, WPI’s executive director, said in a release. “At the same time, the growing patchwork of state and local requirements across the U.S. is exacerbating compliance challenges for companies. That, coupled with looming changes following several Supreme Court decisions that have the potential to upend rulemaking, gives C-suite executives much to contend with in planning their workforce-related strategies.”
Stax Engineering, the venture-backed startup that provides smokestack emissions reduction services for maritime ships, will service all vessels from Toyota Motor North America Inc. visiting the Toyota Berth at the Port of Long Beach, according to a new five-year deal announced today.
Beginning in 2025 to coincide with new California Air Resources Board (CARB) standards, STAX will become the first and only emissions control provider to service roll-on/roll-off (ro-ros) vessels in the state of California, the company said.
Stax has rapidly grown since its launch in the first quarter of this year, supported in part by a $40 million funding round from investors, announced in July. It now holds exclusive service agreements at California ports including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hueneme, Benicia, Richmond, and Oakland. The firm has also partnered with individual companies like NYK Line, Hyundai GLOVIS, Equilon Enterprises LLC d/b/a Shell Oil Products US (Shell), and now Toyota.
Stax says it offers an alternative to shore power with land- and barge-based, mobile emissions capture and control technology for shipping terminal and fleet operators without the need for retrofits.
In the case of this latest deal, the Toyota Long Beach Vehicle Distribution Center imports about 200,000 vehicles each year on ro-ro vessels. Stax will keep those ships green with its flexible exhaust capture system, which attaches to all vessel classes without modification to remove 99% of emitted particulate matter (PM) and 95% of emitted oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Over the lifetime of this new agreement with Toyota, Stax estimated the service will account for approximately 3,700 hours and more than 47 tons of emissions controlled.
“We set out to provide an emissions capture and control solution that was reliable, easily accessible, and cost-effective. As we begin to service Toyota, we’re confident that we can meet the needs of the full breadth of the maritime industry, furthering our impact on the local air quality, public health, and environment,” Mike Walker, CEO of Stax, said in a release. “Continuing to establish strong partnerships will help build momentum for and trust in our technology as we expand beyond the state of California.”
That result showed that driver wages across the industry continue to increase post-pandemic, despite a challenging freight market for motor carriers. The data comes from ATA’s “Driver Compensation Study,” which asked 120 fleets, more than 150,000 employee drivers, and 14,000 independent contractors about their wage and benefit information.
Drilling into specific categories, linehaul less-than-truckload (LTL) drivers earned a median annual amount of $94,525 in 2023, while local LTL drivers earned a median of $80,680. The median annual compensation for drivers at private carriers has risen 12% since 2021, reaching $95,114 in 2023. And leased-on independent contractors for truckload carriers were paid an annual median amount of $186,016 in 2023.
The results also showed how the demographics of the industry are changing, as carriers offered smaller referral and fewer sign-on bonuses for new drivers in 2023 compared to 2021 but more frequently offered tenure bonuses to their current drivers and with a greater median value.
"While our last study, conducted in 2021, illustrated how drivers benefitted from the strongest freight environment in a generation, this latest report shows professional drivers' earnings are still rising—even in a weaker freight economy," ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said in a release. "By offering greater tenure bonuses to their current driver force, many fleets appear to be shifting their workforce priorities from recruitment to retention."