Companies from across the supply chain continue to step-up their efforts to get personal protective equipment (PPE) and other needed supplies to those on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the latest efforts include supplying fuel for flights delivering PPE nationwide and continued retooling of manufacturing facilities to make hand sanitizer and face shields for essential workers.
On Wednesday, oil and gas company BP said it will supply 3 million gallons of jet fuel to FedEx Express charter flights and Alaska Airlines at no cost to support timely delivery of PPE and other essential goods to areas of the United States at greatest risk for the novel coronavirus. BP said it will offset the carbon emissions of all donated fuel deliveries through its Target Neutral carbon emissions reduction program. The donation builds on BP’s commitment to supporting frontline workers by offering a 50-cents-per-gallon discount on fuel for first responders, doctors, nurses, and hospital workers.
The donation to FedEx Express, supplied by Air BP, will be used solely for international air transportation to and from the United States to deliver critical medical supplies, including gloves, gowns, ventilators, and masks, that support the effort to fight Covid-19, BP said. Supplies will be coordinated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The Alaska Airlines program will help with delivery of food, medical supplies, mail, and emergency passenger services in remote Alaska communities.
Other PPE efforts include:
Employees at Jacksonville, Fla.-based third-party logistics provider (3PL) Atlantic Logistics have started a hand sanitizer bulk rebottling program that will serve local truck drivers. Employees are partnering with TravelCenters and TA-Petro to set up personal distribution of hand sanitizer and masks to drivers at the travel center’s truck stop at I-10 and U.S. Hwy. 301 in Jacksonville. “Most Americans want to give back and say, ‘thank you’ to the truckers that keep the shelves stocked and the country moving,” Rob Hooper, Atlantic Logistics’ CEO said in a statement. “I’m so proud of the initiative our employees took to help make these folks’ lives a little safer and simpler.”
Household and professional cleaning products maker SC Johnson has built new capacity to produce up to 75,000 bottles of hand sanitizer per month to meet pandemic-related demand. The company converted a production line at its largest global manufacturing facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, that is typically reserved for testing new products to now produce hand sanitizer. SC Johnson is partnering with Dow Chemical Co. on the project. Dow will make a one-time contribution of bulk sanitizer to produce 25,000 8-oz. bottles for Dow to distribute to its production sites; SC Johnson will make the remaining amount of hand sanitizer needed to reach 75,000 bottles, the company said.
Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia (KMMG) is assembling face shields that will be delivered to healthcare workers across the state. KMMG delivered an initial supply of 15,000 face shields to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) and will gradually increase production to reach a capacity of 200,000 units per month to support donations scheduled to medical facilities in Southern California and New York. Kia said the effort is the latest extension of its Accelerate the Good program, which has pledged to donate $1 million to non-profit partners that assist homeless youth nationwide, including Covenant House, StandUp for Kids, and Family Promise. Kia has also donated N95 masks and gloves to medical facilities throughout Orange County, Calif., where the firm’s U.S. headquarters is located.
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.”
Keep ReadingShow less
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.”