Trends

The multidisciplinary report provides a glimpse of 10 years out, offering insight into the current and future challenges facing the industry and giving practitioners a plan to move forward.

The Turning of the Screw: For a few years now, the screw has been tightening for the current transportation market, but the system remained resilient.

Climate Earth, Four Twenty Seven, and Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index join forces to provide innovative supply chain climate risk management application.

Supply chain management is no longer a cost center for business. To many manufacturing companies, it is now considered the most important part of the business.

The 2014 World Economic Forum called climate change an “economically disruptive force,” and climate-related risks have risen on the agenda of global corporations in the past years.

As companies look to grow, often the back office lags the front, and the warehouse has to try to do more with a distribution operation already at overcapacity.

The importance of supply chain talent management continues to increase as supply chain becomes a more strategic function and many senior supply chain professionals prepare to retire.

High-value cyberspace attacks can change the status quo. Whether they involve stealing the blueprints for a new aircraft design or disrupting the supply of electrical power, all of them have one weakness in common – the supply chain.

The Big software firms in the supply-chain space – SAP, Oracle, Ariba (now acquired by SAP), JDA Software (acquired by RedPrairie), Manhattan Associates, Infor as well as other best-of-breed firms are embarking on several initiatives that are defining the trends for the future.

The 2013 holiday season highlighted the importance of warehousing, distribution and materials handling processes. With Modex around the corner, five thought leaders take stock of what may lie ahead for our industry and our customers.

In the next two years Amazon, the world's largest retailer, will use its own logistics network to deliver nearly every product sold on its Indian portal.

The unveiling of the Aeroscraft, a 266 feet long and 110 feet wide lighter-than-air craft by the now Californian based Worldwide Aeros company simply shows that some maintain faith that the concept so enthusiastically pursued by Count Zeppelin still has a place in the modern age, at least in selected logistics situations, carrying suitable freight to and from certain inhospitable regions.

Online sales of apparel and accessories are estimated to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.2 percent over the next four years and will be the fastest-growing sector of all retail supply chain categories.

2014 is starting off with high demand from e-commerce and other users who are in the market for large, sophisticated space, and lots of it. Modern space with proximity to population centers and a robust logistics infrastructure will dominate the industrial real estate sector in 2014.

A Spanish-led consortium charged with a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal lock system has halted work after a disagreement over massive cost overruns in the project.

The Logistics Hub Initiative aims to establish Jamaica as the premier logistics node within the Americas. The initiative will involve the creation of state of the art logistics zones, upgrading and further development of air and sea port infrastructure and the creation of an enabling environment which will allow businesses to fully exploit Jamaica's strategic location.

An increase in trucking loads is expected in 2014, good new for the 125,000 inland residents who hold jobs in sectors related to that industry.

Elementum provides companies with a service that makes it easier to access supply chain data (shipping information, parts, costs, risks, etc.) via the cloud on mobile devices (and has closed a $44 million second round of funding).

Mark Patterson, Vice President of Innovation and Product Incubation at DHL Supply Chain discusses what trends are expected to shape supply chains in 2014.

We are moving away from some of the technical questions related to SaaS and looking into the business questions that SaaS can help answer. This is a good thing, because we will be able to move away from the trendy toward the essential.