Supply chain technology firm Manhattan Associates, which is known for its “tier one” warehouse, transportation, and labor management software products, says that CEO Eddie Capel will retire tomorrow after 25 total years at the California company, including 12 as its top executive.
Capel originally joined Manhattan in 2000, and, after serving in various operations and technology roles, became its chief operating officer (COO) in 2011 and its president and CEO in 2013.
He will continue to serve Manhattan in the role of Executive Vice-Chairman of the Board, assisting with the CEO transition and special projects. Capel will be succeeded in the corner officer by Eric Clark, who has been serving as CEO of NTT Data North America, the U.S. arm of the Japan-based tech services firm.
Texas-based NTT Data North America says its services include business and technology consulting, data and artificial intelligence, and industry solutions, as well as the development, implementation and management of applications, infrastructure, and connectivity.
Clark comes to his new role after joining NTT in 2018 and becoming CEO in 2022. Earlier in his career, he had held senior leadership positions with ServiceNow, Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Arthur Andersen Business Consulting, Ernst & Young and Bank of America.
“This is an ideal time for a CEO transition,” Capel said in a release. “Our company is in an exceptionally strong position strategically, competitively, operationally and financially. I want to thank our management team and our entire workforce, which is second to none, for their hard work and dedication to our mission of advancing global commerce through advanced technology. I look forward to working closely with Eric and continuing to contribute to our product vision, interacting with our customers and partners, and ensuring the growth and success of Manhattan Associates.”
Having reported on the supply chain world for some 25 years, I've seen technologies come and go. Many were once touted as the best thing since sliced bread but either failed to live up to the hype or else had to simmer a few years before they caught on.
Remember the hoopla surrounding dot-com retail? In the late 1990s, we were told that stores as we knew them would eventually go away, to be totally replaced by online shopping. The ease and convenience of e-commerce made that a reasonable expectation. But in March 2000, the bubble burst, and a host of online retailers closed their virtual doors forever. Of course, online shopping is still very much with us, and its share of total retail sales is growing by the year. Maybe we'll get to that retail seventh heaven someday, but it's taking much longer than originally predicted.
Then there's RFID (radio-frequency identification). These small electronic tags were going to replace barcodes largely because of the vast amount of data they can hold and their capacity to update information.
In 2003, Walmart famously demanded that its top 100 suppliers affix RFID tags to all pallets and cases shipped to its DCs. We figured that if Walmart had gone all in on RFID, the rest of the industry would automatically follow. Well, not so fast. It's true that after years of stutter-step progress, Walmart today is more heavily invested in RFID than ever. But in the rest of the world, the humble barcode is still king.
A more recently hyped technology is blockchain. It was actually conceived back in 1982 but remained just a concept until 2008, when a person (or persons) using the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" created an actual blockchain to serve as the public distributed ledger for cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain was expected to revolutionize the way supply chain partners do business. But it, too, has been a bit slow to take off, and it's still unclear how the blockchain story will play out.
That brings us to the latest potentially game-changing technology: artificial intelligence (AI). In some ways, AI is really just data analytics on steroids. Supply chains have relied on data analytics for decades—the difference now is the promise of greater accuracy and better simulations. Will it ultimately change everything we do in supply chain management? Maybe. But it may take a while. A November report from workplace tools developer Slack showed that AI adoption rates among U.S. workers had slowed in the last quarter, while a recent analysis of open supply chain jobs by software integration specialist Cleo found that only 2% of open jobs required AI skills.
So is AI just another fad or a truly transformative technology? It appears we'll need a few good use cases before we can make that call.
The 40-acre solar facility in Gentry, Arkansas, includes nearly 18,000 solar panels and 10,000-plus bi-facial solar modules to capture sunlight, which is then converted to electricity and transmitted to a nearby electric grid for Carroll County Electric. The facility will produce approximately 9.3M kWh annually and utilize net metering, which helps transfer surplus power onto the power grid.
Construction of the facility began in 2024. The project was managed by NextEra Energy and completed by Verogy. Both Trio (formerly Edison Energy) and Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation provided ongoing consultation throughout planning and development.
“By commissioning this solar facility, J.B. Hunt is demonstrating our commitment to enhancing the communities we serve and to investing in economically viable practices aimed at creating a more sustainable supply chain,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The annual amount of clean energy generated by the J.B. Hunt Solar Facility will be equivalent to that used by nearly 1,200 homes. And, by drawing power from the sun and not a carbon-based source, the carbon dioxide kept from entering the atmosphere will be equivalent to eliminating 1,400 passenger vehicles from the road each year.”
With the new Trump Administration continuing to threaten steep tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China as early as February 1, supply chain organizations preparing for that economic shock must be prepared to make strategic responses that go beyond either absorbing new costs or passing them on to customers, according to Gartner Inc.
But even as they face what would be the most significant tariff changes proposed in the past 50 years, some enterprises could use the potential market volatility to drive a competitive advantage against their rivals, the analyst group said.
Gartner experts said the risks of acting too early to proposed tariffs—and anticipated countermeasures by trading partners—are as acute as acting too late. Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) should be projecting ahead to potential countermeasures, escalations and de-escalations as part of their current scenario planning activities.
“CSCOs who anticipate that current tariff volatility will persist for years, rather than months, should also recognize that their business operations will not emerge successful by remaining static or purely on the defensive,” Brian Whitlock, Senior Research Director in Gartner’s supply chain practice, said in a release.
“The long-term winners will reinvent or reinvigorate their business strategies, developing new capabilities that drive competitive advantage. In almost all cases, this will require material business investment and should be a focal point of current scenario planning,” Whitlock said.
Gartner listed five possible pathways for CSCOs and other leaders to consider when faced with new tariff policy changes:
Retire certain products: Tariff volatility will stress some specific products, or even organizations, to a breaking point, so some enterprises may have to accept that worsening geopolitical conditions should force the retirement of that product.
Renovate products to adjust: New tariffs could prompt renovations (adjustments) to products that were overdue, as businesses will need to take a hard look at the viability of raising or absorbing costs in a still price-sensitive environment.
Rebalance: Additional volatility should be factored into future demand planning, as early winners and losers from initial tariff policies must both be prepared for potential countermeasures, policy escalations and de-escalations, and competitor responses.
Reinvent: As tariff volatility persists, some companies should consider investing in new projects in markets that are not impacted or that align with new geopolitical incentives. Others may pivot and repurpose existing facilities to serve local markets.
Reinvigorate: Early winners of announced tariffs should seek opportunities to extend competitive advantages. For example, they could look to expand existing US-based or domestic manufacturing capacity or reposition themselves within the market by lowering their prices to take market share and drive business growth.
It appears to have found that buyer in Aptean, a deep-pocketed firm that is backed by the private equity firms TA Associates, Insight Partners, Charlesbank Capital Partners, and Clearlake Capital Group.
Through the purchase, Aptean will gain Logility’s customer catalog of over 500 clients in 80 countries, spanning the consumer durable goods, apparel/accessories, food and beverage, industrial manufacturing, fast moving consumer goods, wholesale distribution, and chemicals verticals.
Aptean will also now own the firm’s technology, which Logility says includes demand planning, inventory and supply optimization, manufacturing operations, network design, and vendor and sourcing management.
“Logility possesses years of experience helping global organizations design, build, and manage their supply chains” Aptean CEO TVN Reddy said in a release. “The Logility platform delivers a mission-critical suite of AI-powered supply chain planning solutions designed to address even the most complex requirements. We look forward to welcoming Logility’s loyal customers and experienced team to Aptean.”
Supply chain projects involving generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are gaining steam, and many early movers are already putting the technology to work serving clients. Logistics service providers are among those pushing forward with tools that are helping to improve the customer experience, applying GenAI to freight shipping tasks—such as quoting, taking orders, and booking appointments—and to sales-development activities.
Streamlining work and creating more efficient processes are at the heart of those advances.
“[GenAI] allows us, as humans, to be more efficient—to work faster,” explains Eric Walters, vice president of analytics and performance management at contract logistics specialist DHL Supply Chain, which introduced a suite of GenAI tools late last year. “For example, you could ask an associate to read through a document and summarize it for you, [but] AI does it faster. Data management is another example. Similar to how a human could comb through data and fill in the gaps—GenAI can do this for us too.”
Traditional AI and GenAI top today’s list of supply chain investment priorities, according to a 2024 survey by research and advisory firm Gartner, which polled more than 400 supply chain leaders responsible for their organization’s digital supply chain strategies. Twenty percent cited traditional AI, including machine learning, as a top priority, and 17% said GenAI projects are getting the most attention these days.
AUTOMATING THE FREIGHT CYCLE
Logistics industry projects are in line with what’s happening with GenAI investments in the broader world, according to the technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG). In a study released in November, ISG found that that most projects are focused on text-based applications because of their relatively simple interfaces, rapid return on investment, and usefulness.
“Companies have been especially aggressive in implementing chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), which can provide personalized assistance, customer support, and automated communication on a massive scale,” ISG said in its report on the study.
Large companies with lots of data and a staff of software developers are tackling those projects in house, building LLMs—a type of AI algorithm that can process and understand language or text—that “learn” from all that data and then apply what they’ve learned to solving problems. Freight broker and third-party logistics service provider (3PL) C.H. Robinson is a case in point. The 3PL has launched several homegrown GenAI tools over the past year that can analyze unstructured data, such as emailed text, to speed and streamline the freight shipment cycle.
“We still have customers who want to do things manually—for example, via email,” explains Megan Orth, director of digital connectivity for C.H. Robinson. “GenAI allows us to meet the customer where they are. They get the same [level of customer service] they would get if they were digitally enabled.
“This is different from what other companies [have done]. Some started with chatbots, for example. We took a different approach, [focusing on ways to reduce] the manual tasks and touches in our system.”
C.H. Robinson began with quoting, building an LLM to identify quote-request emails and using GenAI to read the email and respond. The technology eliminates the time-consuming steps of having an employee open and read the email, swivel to another screen, type in the quote request, and then swivel back to send an email response with the price.
“We focused on that swivel—going from one system to another and using the GenAI to read, grab, and go,” Orth explains. “Then we started applying it to the remainder of the shipment cycle.”
C.H. Robinson is now applying GenAI to more complex tasks such as accepting loads, setting appointments for pickup and delivery, and checking on loads in transit. The technology has allowed the 3PL to whittle down the time it takes to complete those tasks from hours to seconds. Before GenAI, it could take an employee as much as four hours to manage and complete a load tender, for example; that task has been reduced to 90 seconds.
The extra time allows employees to focus on more value-added work, like managing exceptions.
“You still have a human in the loop. We still have to monitor and look for exceptions,” Orth says, explaining that C.H. Robinson has designed its workflows to identify issues the GenAI can’t adequately address. “GenAI is not completely hands off the wheel. You still have to build your workflow so that if something doesn’t go right, that’s what our managers work on. [What’s changed is that those managers] are now going to be doing more strategic work.”
Orth credits C.H. Robinson’s software developers for much of the success of the GenAI program.
“We’re fortunate that we have a lot of talented developers who rolled up their sleeves and started learning this,” Orth says, adding that the company also works closely with Microsoft on its GenAI projects.
IMPROVING CUSTOMER SERVICE
DHL Supply Chain is taking a somewhat different approach in its venture into GenAI. The 3PL is deploying a suite of AI applications that are enhancing the company’s data management and analytics capabilities—which, in turn, allows it to provide more value, improve the customer experience, and cut the time it takes to deliver logistics solutions to clients. DHL partnered with Boston Consulting Group to develop the solutions.
The first application is a data cleansing tool that DHL’s in-house design engineers—who develop logistics solutions for shippers—use to clean, sort, and analyze data submitted by potential customers. The tool helps those designers build better transportation routes, as one example.
“This GenAI tool does all that data management for the engineers and allows them to fast forward to the design phase—so [they can] respond to the customer quicker and, at times, [with a] more thorough proposal for their evaluation,” Walters explains.
A second GenAI application supports DHL’s sales team with proposal development. The AI analyzes and manages preliminary RFQ (request for quote) data and fills in the gaps by gathering additional data online, speeding the research and development process and allowing sales to devote more time to specific customer challenges and produce customized solutions.
As Walters explains: “This GenAI tool that business development uses can read through an entire RFQ [and then] go out on the internet and find things like the annual shareholder report for that company …. That helps us identify the key items that are important to that customer and put forward a well-thought-out [proposal] on how we can improve [their] strategy.”
Walters says both tools are part of the company’s broader mission to apply robotics and automation on a large scale.
“Our vision is to deploy strong robotic solutions and [offer] best-in-class data management and data availability,” he explains. “GenAI is the marrying of those two. It’s a robotic solution that’s available to the masses at DHL … Being able to bring GenAI to the fingertips of thousands of associates and increase their efficiency—that allows us to do more to provide value to our customers.”
UNLEASHING OPPORTUNITY
Orth and Walters agree that GenAI is here to stay in supply chain, largely on account of its ability to streamline operations without pressuring customers to change their ways.
“We saw the ‘unlock’ with the unstructured data, which is a big opportunity within the supply chain,” Orth says. “People like to [stick with] their [own] processes; they don’t like to change their ways. [With GenAI], we’re able to unlock those opportunities.”
As some see it, AI is a technology that has finally found its footing in logistics and supply chain, and will only grow from here.
“What’s interesting to me is that AI is not new. It’s really been around for decades,” Walters says, pointing to the Roomba vacuum cleaner and virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa as examples of the technology in action. “AI is just getting the [media attention] now, and we’re seeing it more in the professional work environment.
“I think there is a broad desire to adopt AI and a strong appetite for it.”