Mitch Mac Donald has more than 30 years of experience in both the newspaper and magazine businesses. He has covered the logistics and supply chain fields since 1988. Twice named one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the U.S., he has served in a multitude of editorial and publishing roles. The leading force behind the launch of Supply Chain Management Review, he was that brand's founding publisher and editorial director from 1997 to 2000. Additionally, he has served as news editor, chief editor, publisher and editorial director of Logistics Management, as well as publisher of Modern Materials Handling. Mitch is also the president and CEO of Agile Business Media, LLC, the parent company of DC VELOCITY and CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly.
Our executive editor-news, Mark Solomon, has obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). He wakes up at least once during the night, his system jolted by a lack of oxygen. That's because his soft palate and tongue have collapsed onto his throat and partially or fully closed off his airway. He is tired in the morning and drowsy through much of the day. Lunchtime is typically naptime.
Take his unfortunate circumstance and export it to the world of commercial truck drivers operating big machines at high velocities around thousands of people. They drive for 11 straight hours (with a 30-minute break) over bad roads, in terrible weather and gridlocked traffic, and alongside amateur drivers known as "motorists." Should these professionals cope with a disorder that could compromise their alertness and judgment, jeopardize highway safety, and if left untreated, lead to a heart attack or stroke? The answer, which should be obvious to anyone, is no.
All the more puzzling, then, was the Trump administration's decision last August to gut a rulemaking begun in March 2016 to examine whether OSA screening should be mandatory for truck drivers and rail operators. The decision was viewed unfavorably by various groups, including the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which voiced disappointment that the White House shut down a "needed" rulemaking.
Drivers must get a medical exam to hold a commercial driver's license, and it is up to a medical examiner to determine if a driver's condition interferes with performance. A driver diagnosed with moderate or severe OSA is sidelined until an examiner determines the disorder is under control. However, stakeholders—including examiners—were hoping the Department of Transportation (DOT) would provide clarity on the issue as there are gray areas on what is and is not allowed when addressing OSA.
Indeed, in the original notice, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) merely wanted to "consider regulatory action to ensure consistency in addressing the risk of OSA among transportation workers with safety-sensitive duties."
In withdrawing the proposal, the sub-agencies said "current safety programs" and an FRA rulemaking addressing "fatigue risk management" were the appropriate avenues to address OSA's impact. In 2012, FMCSA's Motor Carrier Safety Advisory Committee and Medical Review Board released guidelines for OSA screening as part of DOT medical examinations. They were updated in 2016. Whether that's a clear enough roadmap is anybody's guess.
The private sector doesn't provide much robust engagement in this area, either; two spring 2016 surveys of more than 800 drivers conducted by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), a nonprofit arm of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), found that only 24 percent of employee drivers and 12 percent of independent drivers leased to a motor carrier said their carriers had a defined OSA policy. In addition, the vast majority of all respondents said their carriers' insurance did not cover any of the costs of OSA testing, a major deterrent in drivers' getting checked.
Perhaps the Trump administration is right in that current policies are adequate to address the problem. But there is enough concern over OSA to justify a further look into this widespread and often unchecked problem. A joint ATRI and University of Pennsylvania study estimated that 28 percent of truck drivers have some form of OSA. Overweight people who eat poorly and don't get enough exercise are at elevated risk. Unfortunately, too many truck drivers fit that profile.
We are no fans of excessive regulation. This page repeatedly took the Obama administration to task over intrusive burdens placed on the trucking industry. Yet as we listened to Solomon's story and extrapolated that to the thousands of people pulling 18-wheelers down our roads, we think this is one rule that should have been saved from the cutting-room floor.
A team from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, walked away with top honors at this year’s event. It was the school’s first time competing in the scholarship competition, which was held during IANA’s Intermodal Expo in September.
The winning squad included students Jaren Bussell, Elizabeth Shuler, Brock Sooley, and Kathryn Whittaker and was coached by Dr. Donald Maier, associate professor of practice–supply chain. “It is exciting to see what the students can achieve in five hours. Each team reads, analyzes, and prepares a presentation with no faculty input,” Maier said in a release.
In addition to UT, participating schools included the California State Maritime Academy, College of Charleston, Georgia Southern University, and SUNY Maritime as well as the universities of Arkansas, Maryland, North Florida, North Texas, and Wisconsin at Superior.
IANA’s scholarship awards support curriculums designed to attract students to careers in freight and intermodal transportation. Since the program’s inception in 2007, IANA has awarded over $5.3 million in scholarships.
Family-owned business Cibao Meat Products, a producer of Hispanic-style sausages and deli meats, has long prided itself on staying true to the traditions and values the company was founded on in 1969—like a commitment to high-quality ingredients and a family workplace atmosphere. Less of a source of pride, however, was its continuing reliance on the same, mostly manual, processes and data management techniques used at its inception.
With the company now selling its meats to retail giants such as BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costco as well as 500 supermarkets and restaurants across the U.S., Cibao president Heinz Vieluf Jr. knew that it was time to take the company into the digital age. “As a third-generation leader of a multigenerational company, I put an emphasis on bringing our business into the digital future and utilizing technologies that will help propel success,” he said in a statement.
IN WITH THE NEW
In Cibao’s case, that would require modernizing its data-collection practices. Because the meat producer still relied on legacy processes, its company data and customer data were siloed, scattered throughout departments from sales to manufacturing to accounting. Teams were manually gathering information and creating reports on a weekly or biweekly basis. As a result, company leaders had no real-time visibility into business-critical operations. On top of that, creating those reports ate up hours of team members’ time each week.
For help bringing all of its organizational data into one central location, Cibao turned to the Slingshot work management platform from software company Infragistics. In October 2023, the company began working with Slingshot to compile data from multiple sources into a centralized hub that would be accessible to every employee.
Today, with the new platform in place, Cibao is benefiting from enhanced data transparency across the company and from accelerated data-reporting capabilities. Employees can now create reports within minutes, eliminating the biweekly reports in favor of daily assessments and unlocking insights needed to make critical decisions 10 times faster than before—saving 120 hours a month, the company says. For example, now that it has real-time access to its customer payment data, Cibao’s accounts receivable team has been able to detect any discrepancies in real time. This has allowed the team to check in with customers as soon as they notice a potential issue, which has increased the company’s cash flow by $40,000 a week on average, or up to 65%.
STRENGTHENING THE BOTTOM LINE
With teams saving hours each week on reporting, Cibao employees can now concentrate on higher-value tasks. For instance, they have more time to connect one-on-one with clients and develop relationships, instead of getting held up on the back end. They can also focus on new marketing efforts and promotions, not only boosting customer satisfaction but also helping to grow existing customer relationships and develop new ones.
“We created Slingshot to bring together data that has traditionally been spread across departments into one completely accessible space so that companies can better drive productivity, insights, and ultimately business results,” said Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot, in the statement. “By bringing its data into a central location, Cibao Meat Products has unlocked insights that have allowed [it] to move strategically and at a faster pace, strengthening the company’s bottom line.”
As autonomous systems take on a bigger role in logistics and industrial production applications, the race is on to make the equipment smarter, more efficient, and safer. To accelerate work in this area, the German lift truck and logistics technology vendor Kion Group is partnering with a local university to support expanded studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.
According to Kion, Peitz’s work will focus on the development of autonomous systems that operate intelligently and safely for all parties involved, with a particular focus on autonomous mobile robots, forklift trucks, and AI-based systems that are used in logistics and production environments.
The objective of the endowed professorship is to advance the field of research at the highest international level, Kion said in a statement. In close collaboration with research networks and other partners both within and outside TU Dortmund University, such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML and the Kion Group itself, the professorship will form a “hub” for digital and intelligent logistics, the company added.
American skin-care company ET Browne—best known for its Palmer’s Cocoa Butter—has trimmed costs, boosted revenue, and increased profits thanks to a recent IT upgrade from its longtime technology partner Syspro, a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider that specializes in serving manufacturing and distribution businesses. ET Browne has run on Syspro software for 25 years and racked up some of its biggest year-over-year improvements following a 2023 upgrade to the latest version of Syspro ERP—an enhancement that allowed it to leverage the platform’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities to build a just-in-time inventory system.
The net result? A smoother-running supply chain.
“We’ve successfully relied on [Syspro] for more than a quarter century while both growing and aligning our business to take advantage of the [platform’s] enhancements,” Pieter Goes, ET Browne’s vice president of IT & BI (business intelligence), said in a statement describing the project. “After bringing in [Syspro] to do native demand forecasts, we were able to better evaluate key markets and key customers, enabling our forecasting and capacity planning to be much more accurate. As a result, we can achieve a fill rate of greater than 95% and are able to process our purchase orders much sooner, resulting in better supply.”
NEW CAPABILITIES, BETTER OUTCOMES
Syspro’s MRP capabilities allow companies to balance supply and demand for materials and components so they can accelerate manufacturing production. With the system upgrade, ET Browne was able to take advantage of those capabilities to gain better visibility and control over inventory and the supply chain. As the companies explain, this allowed ET Browne to predict demand, understand how filling the projected sales pipeline would affect production schedules, and anticipate the peaks in demand it would need to buffer.
Leveraging those demand forecasting and supply chain management capabilities, ET Browne created a just-in-time inventory system that has dramatically reduced the amount of raw material and product it keeps on hand—a move that is translating into increased profits: Since implementing the upgrade, ET Browne has reduced inventory by 22% and increased profits 113% on 7% revenue growth.
ET Browne’s leaders say they intend to leverage Syspro to manage emerging challenges as well. Those include meeting growing consumer, distributor, and government demands to use recycled materials in packaging, while also making sure the company first uses up the materials it already has on hand. That transition will increase complexity within the company’s bill of materials, something Syspro’s management capabilities can help it navigate.
“[Syspro] ERP provides much more than just financial management,” Brian Rainboth, CEO of Syspro Americas, said in the statement. “Our platform empowers mid-market manufacturers to create accurate demand forecasts [and] project exactly how much raw material they’ll need to order and how much product they need to make to meet demand. We’re proud to celebrate 25 years with ET Browne and look forward to enabling future growth and profitability as the company deploys additional capabilities with [our] platform.”
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Illustration courtesy of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation
For consumers, the car-buying process generally includes a test drive so they can see if the vehicle lives up to its hype before they plunk down any money. But the process can be a little more difficult for commercial fleet managers.
The 2025 Peterbilt 579 day cab tractor, branded in Clean Energy’s signature green, will be available for fleets to test on their normal routes for up to two weeks. And if you don’t happen to have an RNG fueling station in your own yard, that’s no problem: The fleets testing the demo truck will be able to use Clean Energy’s fueling infrastructure, which consists of over 600 stations across North America, 200 of which have public tractor-trailer access.
First in line to try the new rig—which can haul heavy loads for an 800-mile range—is transportation and logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. After Hunt completes its trial, the truck will make its way through large and medium-sized heavy-duty trucking companies in California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Clean Energy says it expects to run the X15N demo truck program at least through 2025.
“Vehicles powered by renewable natural gas produce significantly less carbon emissions throughout their lifecycle and are more compatible with today’s available infrastructure than most competing emissions-reduction technologies,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability, and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The new technology and supporting fuel network in this pilot have the potential to be a viable, cost-effective solution for customers wanting to decrease their carbon footprint in the near term.”