MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics

U.S. News & World Report ranks Michigan State as the top school for Supply Chain Management and Georgia Tech first for Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering on this year's lists.

3D printing goes mainstream with Amazon's 3D printing store and it certainly seems 3D printing has come of age when Amazon wants to offer print on demand.

There is one specific question that has received relatively little attention: how do companies define the optimal quantity of inner packs to be placed inside outer packs to minimize overall logistics costs?

Powerful new tools could give us a better picture of what's going on across our supply chains.

What ails us, and what may fix our manufacturing problems, could be different than you think.

Supply chain managers face a coming shortage of talent. The best should be putting strategies in place now to prepare for the future.

The model described in this article helps companies to choose the right partners and maximize their chances of developing the innovations that will help them maintain their competitive position.

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.

Supply chain management is the hot new MBA, according to the Wall Street Journal, or why it was the leading topic of discussion at all four of the Material Handling & U.S. Logistics Roadmap round table meetings last summer.

So how will 3D Printing impact the supply chain and logistics? It will accelerate a shift from “push supply chains” to “pull supply chains.” Some recent findings indicate that nearly 20% of those transport, logistics and supply chain executives surveyed were currently using 3D printing to some degree. Just under 40% believed 3D printing would have the most impact on increased customization.

Globalization has been a major industrial trend in which low labour costs have driven companies to set up their production sites in low cost countries, thus creating growth of cargo shipping between continents. The balance between transportation and labour cost may change. A new trend in the future may be globalization, where the global business is supported by local 3D production that optimizes the business through speed, quality or personalization.

I’ve thought long and hard about what to say this year because of all the media buzz around shale oil and natural gas fracking as energy saviors, maybe bringing back cheap energy and rendering the big user oil countries less dependent on oil, and less dependent on OPEC and other oil producing countries. My view has not been altered by the recent news around fracking.

Before pursuing any supply chain innovation, a company has to be clear about the objective; is the goal continuous improvement to maintain market position with a modest increase in margin or to disrupt the industry? Many managers get starry-eyed over the latter objective but actually need to target the former.

No one can precisely foretell whether oil prices will drop, continue to stay high, or even go much higher. No one can predict the frequent, unexpected swings that might take place either. However, I don’t know many who are betting that prices will go down or stabilize over the long run.

It’s not often that supply chain issues capture the wider public’s imagination. However, there is one innovation in recent years, 3D printing, which appears to make Star Trek science a stunning reality and for this reason has broken into the public’s consciousness.