Trends

Modern Demand-Driven Manufacturers are today’s truly Lean thinkers and are continuously improving their operations to create more opportunities for innovation, a recent report by Synchrono addresses challenges, innovation and technologies associated with manufacturing digitization, visibility and synchronization for 2017.

The fed is still hitting truckers with a barrage of costly regulations in an era of scant profits, everything from emissions, training standards, electronic onboard recorders, fuel mileage standards and speed limiters are in play - and it’s only going cost shippers more.

Driven by the “One Belt, One Road” initiative to recreate the ancient Silk Road, the overland and maritime trading route connecting Asia and Europe, China's non-financial direct investment abroad grew 54 per cent in the first nine months of 2016 to $134 billion, surpassing the $121 billion for the whole of the previous year.

Alibaba Group, the largest retail commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume, has selected SEKO Logistics as a 3PL service provider in Hong Kong and Taiwan to especially support small and medium-sized companies requiring localized and cost efficient export processes and integrated services.

The high tech companies that have focused on ecommerce and fulfillment are expanding across the supply chain, leveraging vast amounts of capital to expand their future business.

The strategic supply chain requires a new kind of leader; one with skills and orientations not currently found in many supply chain managers, this article describes what's needed to complete that change, and the steps to get there.

The logistics industry is a capital intensive business, and M&A and investment activity says a lot about the technologies companies are betting their futures on, especially UPS and FedEx who are the most active companies in this space.

On October 28, 2016, the European Union has updated its EU Tariff, also known as the Combined Nomenclature.

American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear praised the inclusion of a permanent hours-of-service restart fix in Congress’ bipartisan Continuing Resolution regarding budget funding in a House Appropriations Committee action to keep the federal government funded through April 17, 2017.

Even though volumes have flattened, an encouraging service outlook, coupled with the regulatory crunch creeping up on the trucking market, is setting the intermodal rail sector up to regain its footing.

Moia, Volkswagen’s 13th brand, will initially focus on ride-hailing and car-sharing and will roll out its services in two European cities next year before possibly expanding to other regions and aims to be one of the world’s three biggest mobility providers to generate revenue of “a couple of billion” of euros in a few years.

Using the same technologies as in self-driving cars, Amazon is testing a grocery store in downtown Seattle that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever having to stand in a checkout line.

Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to buy startup Geometric Intelligence Inc. to help the ride-hailing company create a new artificial-intelligence research lab and stay ahead of efforts to develop self-driving vehicles.

Apple has acknowledged for the first time that it is investing in building a self-driving car, and in a letter to US transport regulators, Apple said it was "excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation."

With manufacturers still trying to figure out how to give electric cars a range of more than 250 miles, Nikola Motor Company, referred to as "the Tesla of trucks," has just revealed its hydrogen-electric semi-truck which they are claiming has a total operating range of up to 1,200 miles.

Kevin Johnson will become chief executive officer and assume full responsibility for Starbucks global business and operations, Howard Schultz to become executive chairman and focus on retail innovation and accelerating growth of Starbucks ultra-premium retail formats.

AWS Snowmobile is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to AWS, you can transfer up to 100PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck.

Given Elaine Chao's work in labor, it’s also worth watching if and how Chao will deal with the implications self-driving technology will have on the country’s workforce.

On February 29, 2016, Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Chrystia Freeland, and the European Union’s Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, announced the completion of the legal review of the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).

As the battles begin for key appointments in President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet, a few names have arisen as likely choices for U.S. Secretary of Transportation.