“Fall is going to feel more like an extended summer for millions of Americans this year,” AccuWeather Lead Long-Range Expert Paul Pastelok said in a release. “Much of the country will experience a delayed transition to cooler temperatures this year, following a summer with intense heat. We’ve seen record-high temperatures shattered in several cities across California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and North Carolina this summer. We could see more record temperatures this fall.”
Specifically, the AccuWeather 2024 U.S. Fall Forecast predicts that temperatures are expected to hover 1 to 3 degrees or more above the historical average across much of the country, most of the time, from September through November. The highest temperature departures are expected across parts of the Great Lakes region, the Midwest and the Rockies.
In contrast, the only areas where above-historical average temperatures are not expected this autumn are in Florida, parts of coastal Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and coastal areas along California, Oregon and Washington. And the Pacific Northwest is the only region where experts are predicting an early arrival of fall-like weather, including some early-season storms.
The transition to cooler fall air is typically known for sparking the “second severe weather season” as waves of cold air begin to dive southward, clashing with the warm and humid air across much of the central and eastern United States.
That pattern could be exacerbated this year, as 2024 has been an extremely active year for severe weather in the United States, and the trend could continue well into autumn. “There have been more than 1,400 tornado reports this year. That number is already above the historical average number of tornadoes typically reported in a year,” said Pastelok. “We could see even more tornadoes from hurricanes and tropical storms making landfall this fall.”
A main factor pushing the noticeable shift in fall temperatures is emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and our warming atmosphere, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist and Climate Expert Brett Anderson said. That climate change is also impacting agriculture and fall tourism dates.
“We are already seeing a later end to the growing season. The first freeze of the season in many regions is now several days to a week or more later than the typical first freeze we saw just a few decades ago. Warmer nights also slow the breakdown of green chlorophyll in leaves, which has led to a delay in peak foliage in many areas, as well as less vibrant fall colors,” explained Anderson. “Warmer, more humid and wetter conditions in the summer months can promote the growth of fungi and also allow more tree-damaging insects to survive longer into the fall season, putting additional stress on trees.”
For example, millions of residents and workers in the Tampa region have now left their homes and jobs, heeding increasingly dire evacuation warnings from state officials. They’re fleeing the estimated 10 to 20 feet of storm surge that is forecast to swamp the area, due to Hurricane Milton’s status as the strongest hurricane in the Gulf since Rita in 2005, the fifth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on pressure, and the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on its peak winds, according to market data provider Industrial Info Resources.
Between that mass migration and the storm’s effect on buildings and infrastructure, supply chain impacts could hit the energy logistics and agriculture sectors particularly hard, according to a report from Everstream Analytics.
The Tampa Bay metro area is the most vulnerable area, with the potential for storm surge to halt port operations, roads, rails, air travel, and business operations – possibly for an extended period of time. In contrast to those “severe to potentially catastrophic” effects, key supply chain hubs outside of the core zone of impact—including the Miami metro area along with Jacksonville, FL and Savannah, GA—could also be impacted but to a more moderate level, such as slowdowns in port operations and air cargo, Everstream Analytics’ Chief Meteorologist Jon Davis said in a report.
Although it was recently downgraded from a Category 5 to Category 4 storm, Milton is anticipated to have major disruptions for transportation, in large part because it will strike an “already fragile supply chain environment” that is still reeling from the fury of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago and the ILA port strike that ended just five days ago and crippled ports along the East and Gulf Coasts, a report from Project44 said.
The storm will also affect supply chain operations at sea, since approximately 74 container vessels are located near the storm and may experience delays as they await safe entry into major ports. Vessels already at the ports may face delays departing as they wait for storm conditions to clear, Project44 said.
On land, Florida will likely also face impacts in the Last Mile delivery industry as roads become difficult to navigate and workers evacuate for safety.
Likewise, freight rail networks are also shifting engines, cars, and shipments out of the path of the storm as the industry continues “adapting to a world shaped by climate change,” the Association of American Railroads (AAR) said. Before floods arrive, railroads may relocate locomotives, elevate track infrastructure, and remove sensitive electronic equipment such as sensors, signals and switches. However, forceful water can move a bridge from its support beams or destabilize it by unearthing the supporting soil, so in certain conditions, railroads may park rail cars full of heavy materials — like rocks and ballast — on a bridge before a flood to weigh it down, AAR said.
Seagull Software, which makes “BarTender” label management software, today said it has combined with Mojix, a provider of item-level inventory management and traceability.
As a single company, the combined firms will offer new capabilities in end-to-end supply chain management, leveraging BarTender’s global customer base and value-added channel partner network with more than 250,000 customers across 175 countries.
“We believe that labeling is the key to addressing the traceability challenge,” Dan Doles, now acting CEO and Director of Seagull, said in a release. “BarTender’s labeling software is ubiquitous at the front end of the supply chain, enabling the printing of more than 100 billion labels each year. By combining with Mojix, we will capture and track that data through the supply chain, providing unparalleled item-level traceability and visibility.”
That approach will allow the partners to provide their customers with value-added solutions for compliance, sustainability, serialization, and inventory and asset management requirements across the supply chain ecosystem, according to Chris Cassidy, the newly appointed Chief Revenue Officer of Seagull.
The features are based on SAP’s “generative AI copilot” platform called Joule, launched about a year ago. The latest upgrades to that product add collaborative AI agents that truly speak the language of business, expand Joule’s capabilities to support 80% of SAP’s most-used business tasks, and embed Joule more deeply within the company’s portfolio.
Specifically, collaborative multi-agent systems can now deploy specialized AI agents to tackle specific tasks and enable them to collaborate on intricate business workflows, adapting their strategies to meet shared objectives. SAP is infusing Joule with multiple collaborative AI agents that will combine their unique expertise across business functions to collaboratively accomplish complex workflows. These AI agents enhance productivity by breaking down silos and freeing workers to concentrate on areas where human ingenuity thrives.
And Walldorf, Germany-based SAP also said it had met its goal to train workers how to use those powerful new AI tools by upskilling 2 million people worldwide by 2025. That approach has lowered the world’s digital skills gap through role-based certifications, free training materials, and hands-on opportunities for developers. To continue that program, SAP says it will continue to expand its portfolio of AI-related learning opportunities, including courses on generative AI, AI ethics, and the company’s advanced AI tools and platforms.
For players in the drug distribution business, the countdown is on. In less than two months, every business involved in the pharmaceutical supply chain must be fully compliant with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA)—a 2013 law containing strict traceability requirements for the distribution of certain prescription drugs. Over the past decade, the DSCSA has been implemented in phases, but now the clock is running out. The law takes full effect on Nov. 27, barring any further adjustments or delays.
Among other measures, the DSCSA requires drug manufacturers to affix a unique product identifier, essentially a barcode, to every package so it can be tracked and traced during its journey through the supply chain. To thwart drug counterfeiters, the new law further requires wholesalers and drug dispensers to verify the validity of products they handle to assure they are genuine.
Is the pharmaceutical industry ready for all this? To find out, we spoke with Elizabeth Gallenagh, general counsel and senior vice president, supply chain integrity at the Healthcare Distribution Alliance(HDA), a national organization that represents U.S. health-care distributors. In addition to serving as HDA’s chief legal officer, Gallenagh is also the group’s primary expert on prescription drug traceability, supply chain safety and integrity, distributor licensure, and tax issues. She is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law and George Washington University.
Gallenagh recently spoke with David Maloney, **{DC Velocity’}s group editorial director, about the enactment of DSCSA for an episode of the “Logistics Matters” podcast.
Q: First of all, can you tell us a little bit about the Healthcare Distribution Alliance?
A: Yes, the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, or HDA, is a national trade organization representing pharmaceutical distributors, also known as wholesalers. We have about 40 members that purchase drugs from manufacturers. They store the products in their warehouses and then fill orders for pharmacy customers throughout the country.
Q: The Drug Supply Chain Security Act will go into final effect in November. What’s the intent of the legislation?
A: The Drug Supply Chain Security Act—or as we call it, the DSCSA—is a law that was enacted in 2013. Its intent was to put together a national framework for drug supply chain security, essentially to enable a tighter, safer, more secure supply chain for the domestic U.S. market.
It involves all trading partners and ultimately will create an interoperable system that enables investigations by tracing a product with every transaction or sale of that product throughout the supply chain, down to the provider level.
Q: What are the law’s major requirements?
A: The law was actually phased in over a period of about 10 years. Many of the major requirements went into effect throughout that initial 10-year period—things like requirements mandating that manufacturers serialize their products and stipulating that trading partners only do business with other authorized trading partners. Authorized trading partners are defined as those that are duly licensed or registered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or licensed by the states.
It also requires tracking of product with every transaction. A transaction is defined as a sale of the product, essentially from one authorized trading partner to another. And as we progress into the final phase, the law will also require serialized data, basically transaction information at the serial-number level that moves with the product through every transaction throughout the supply chain.
Q: You’ve said that the industry has had years to ramp up to comply with the law. Are our pharmaceutical supply chains ready for the final phase?
A: I think that’s still the $64,000 question. I can speak for our members, who have been doing everything in their power to get their own systems and processes ready to receive the serialized products and data, and then to transmit that serialized data with the product to their pharmacy customers.
That said, there are still some gaps in the system. We have been in a “stabilization” period that expires on Nov. 27. During this period, everybody has been testing and bringing product and data transactions live into production. I will tell you that many are ready, but there are still bugs that are being worked out as we race toward November.
I should also note that on Aug. 19, the HDA sent a letter to the FDA stating that “despite a concerted effort, some in the supply chain appear to remain short of reaching our joint goal of complete implementation.” In its letter, the group urged the FDA to “take immediate action to forestall potential disruptions to the drug supply chain and patient care that could stem from incomplete implementation of the enhanced drug distribution security (EDDS) requirements” and asked the agency to adopt “a phased, stepwise approach” to implementing the requirements in order to avoid disruptions to the movement of drugs through the supply chain.
Q: Will penalties be imposed on companies that fail to meet the deadline?
A: There will be penalties. But it’s important to note that the DSCSA is really about setting up the framework for tracking and tracing products—so that a manufacturer will only be permitted to sell its product downstream if it is a serialized product and the manufacturer can transmit the corresponding serialized data with the product. And then a distributor can only receive that product and purchase it if it has the corresponding data.
Q: Of course, this is only possible if you have the right technology in place to monitor and track drugs as they move through the supply chain. What kind of technologies are being deployed to make this possible?
A: The key to all of this is the barcode, which is mandated under the law in terms of the way that product is serialized. Everybody in the supply chain has to have the capability to utilize the barcode. If you’re a manufacturer, you have to incorporate that 2-D barcode with the serialized data into that product’s label. And that should already be in place under the first phases of the law.
Downstream partners will have to be able to read that barcode and import that data into their systems. This also enables verification of the product at the unit level.
In addition, we’re also deploying what we call EPCIS [a global data-sharing standard developed by the global standards organization GS1 that allows businesses to capture and share information about the movement and status of goods]. That is the backbone for getting all of this serialized data flowing to all of the requisite trading partners throughout the supply chain.
Q: As we learned during the push to distribute Covid-19 vaccines, a good number of pharmaceutical products must be temperature- or humidity-controlled. Will these new regulations help ensure that they’re properly handled as they move through the supply chain?
A: The DSCSA doesn’t speak specifically to temperature controls. However, there are other parts of the law [the overall Drug Quality and Security Act, which includes the DSCSA as well as the Compounding Quality Act] that do require those controls to be in place. That said, the DSCSA does require affected parties to do business with authorized trading partners. And in order to be an authorized trading partner, you have to adhere to temperature controls and safety rules for products, product handling, etc.
Q: Many of our pharmaceuticals are manufactured overseas, in China and India, for example. Do foreign manufacturers have to comply with DSCSA requirements?
A: If a foreign entity is producing product for use in the U.S. domestic market, the product has to be approved by the FDA. And it also has to meet DSCSA requirements.
Q: We hear a lot about counterfeit products infiltrating the drug supply chain. Will these new regulations reduce the number of counterfeits in the market?
A: We certainly hope so. All of this really started [as an effort to combat the rise in] counterfeit products and transactions back in the early 2000s. Obviously, the idea is to deter counterfeiters from infiltrating the U.S. drug supply chain. But really, what the law does is provide tools for the FDA and regulatory agencies to investigate suspect and illegitimate product, as well as tools that will enable the trading partners that are involved in the transactions to identify suspect product, flag it, quarantine it, investigate it, and deem it OK or deem it illegitimate based on their investigations.
So it really gives some investigatory and prosecutorial tools to the agencies. And it puts a process in place with the technology and serialization to pinpoint whether something is good product through verification with the manufacturer or through tracing of the product data that has accompanied the product throughout its journey through the supply chain.
Q: Drug prices in the U.S. are notoriously high compared with prices in many other countries. Will these new requirements add to the overall cost of supplying medication?
A: I haven’t seen any data that alludes to DSCSA compliance adding to drug costs. It’s an industry that’s built around efficiency, and so my sense is that [pharma industry players] probably have also built in plans over the last decade to absorb some of those costs. That said, the law also established a national tracking and tracing framework, where before we had a 50-state patchwork of regulations. So there would likely be some efficiencies gained from following a single, nationwide protocol, even though it’s a huge undertaking, versus doing it 50 different ways across the country.
Q: Now that DSCSA is nearing full implementation, how are your members feeling about the process?
A: Our members have been committed to this from the very beginning. We were very involved in negotiating on the legislation and pushing these concepts. We really have been working toward implementation from the get-go and throughout this entire 11-year period; we very much want to get to full implementation. But in the beginning, there may be some hiccups. We may hit a few bumps along the way.
A colleague of mine used to say, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” And I think that at each phase as we deploy new technologies and new processes, we will learn new ways to do things more efficiently. So we’re pushing hard toward November, and we are very hopeful.
Autonomous inventory management system provider Corvus Robotics is delivering drone technology for lights-out warehouse environments with the newest version of its Corvus One drone system, announced today.
The update is supported by an $18 million funding round led by S2G Ventures and Spero Adventures.
“Corvus Robotics fits our mission to invest in companies that truly transform the way business is conducted,” Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla and partner at Spero Ventures, said in a press release Tuesday. “Other than a landing pad, its drone-powered system requires no infrastructure, is quick and easy to deploy, and cost-effective to manage. It literally merges with the existing warehouse environment.”
Corvus Robotics’ drone-based inventory management system uses computer vision and generative AI to understand its environment, flying autonomously in both very narrow aisles—a minimum width of 50 inches—and in very wide aisles. It uses obstacle detection to operate safely in warehouses and features an advanced barcode scanning system that can read any barcode symbology in any orientation placed anywhere on the front of cartons or pallets, according to the company.
The lights-out feature is already in use at customer locations.
“Being able to run inventory checks 24/7 without operator assistance has been a game changer,” Austin Feagins, senior director of solutions at third-party logistics services (3PL) provider Staci Americas, said in the release. “The lights-out capability in the Corvus One system allows our inventory teams to correct discrepancies off-shift and pre-shift before production starts each day, limiting fulfillment delays and production impacts.”