Many organizations faced the most disruptive year in their history as they dealt with the consequences of the pandemic. Large swings in supply and demand for different product categories and changes in distribution patterns left logistics managers grappling with the biggest challenge of their careers. Challenges that were made all the more difficult by one […]
Merchandise fulfillment variability has been on the rise for a number of years, due in large part to the growth of e-commerce. But all bets were off in 2020 as variability went off the charts. As you can see from the two included images charting the quarterly change in US e-commerce sales (year over year) […]
No question – logistics challenges have increased since the rise of e-commerce and the number of products on the market started to multiply. For this reason, supply chain solutions have become an integral part of business strategies to cope with these ever-increasing complexities. However, there is the difficult question of which technology to implement to […]
Warehousing megatrends are primarily driven by the long-term, sustained, global growth of e-commerce. Today’s customer experience depends on warehouse activity more than ever before. But these warehouses must fulfill more orders of smaller handling units, at higher costs with more required tasks. Furthermore, fulfillment horizons have become compressed while variability in throughput requirements has increased. These pressures have encouraged greater […]
The election is behind us (well, maybe not), and during the campaign COVID-19 was a key talking point for both President Trump and former Vice President Biden. One of the biggest questions that still does not have an answer is when a coronavirus vaccine will be ready. Beyond that, there are all the logistical hurdles […]
The Robotic Industries Association (RIA) hosted its virtual Autonomous Mobile Robot Conference earlier this week (October 26 – 27). I personally kicked off research on the global mobile warehouse robotics market earlier this month and therefore chose to attend conference sessions that provided insights on the broader context of mobile warehouse robotics, namely the concepts of ecosystems, integration, and interoperability. Autonomous mobile robot (AMR) interoperability as a concept found its way into many sessions but it was the main topic of the session presentation by Aaron Prather of FedEx. A unifying architecture as the mechanism to scale AMR adoption…
The exponential growth of e-commerce in 2020 has brought peak-like levels of order volume for many retailers since as early as March. Looking to the quickly approaching actual peak season, volumes are predicted to hit unprecedented levels, and carriers have been warning shippers for months to expect capacity crunches, increased surcharges/fees and other challenges. Shippers must […]
