News

Modern Material Handling readers evaluate their usage of materials handling software technology, its value to their organizations, and spending plans for expanding and updating existing applications.

As supply chains become more complex and the number of overseas suppliers expand, Global Trade Management has assumed critical importance. How are the leaders managing supplier relationships, data integration, and compliance challenges in this increasingly tough global arena? A new Chief Supply Chain Officer study from the Aberdeen Group provides some answers.

There are plenty of usual suspects when hunting for improved efficiencies in any lift truck fleet. For example, aging equipment, truck abuse and under-utilized assets are all key sources of unanticipated maintenance costs. But are breakdowns, excessive damage and unnecessary trucks really unanticipated? To help fleet managers identify and pre-empt unanticipated costs, Modern spoke with some of the leading experts in the market to compile best practices.

How can you make strategic supply chain decisions faster and more effectively? For HP, one answer lies in a technique called Geographic Analytics—the visualization of network information on a map in order to drive supply chain optimization. Flexible, transparent, and intuitive, GA has greatly enhanced HP’s toolbox for strategic assessments.

In a presentation on its first-ever annual analyst day today, Urban Outfitters made an announcement: The chain, CIO Calvin Hollinger said, will switch from cash registers to Apple products. "Sales people will have iPod touches," Joe Weistenthal reports, "and cash registers are being phased out in favor of iPads on a swivel."

Due to its simultaneously disgusting and entertaining nature the 2013 meat adulteration scandal, or horse meat incident remains in the news even months after beginning. You might not be in the food industry yourself, but the scandal points out how vulnerable a supply chain with low upstream visibility can be.

In order to determine whether centralized logistics structures also improve logistics performance, APQC compared the quality of deliveries, inventory management, and logistics costs of organizations using a centralized structure with those using a decentralized structure.

Distribution center (DC) and material handling equipment (MHE) design must be flexible to meet the challenges of today’s changing business climate, according to a new paper by Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium.

The supply chain discipline is replete with rules that most managers live by. But in certain cases, true innovation and breakthroughs come only when those conventional rules are broken. By clearly understanding the nature of the rules and the details of your supply chain, you can better determine where and when rule-breaking makes sense.

Want to improve your outsourcing efforts? This article unpacks the lessons of five “Big Thinkers” in the world of economics and shares how their insights can help improve your outsourcing.

The skill sets required to manage global supply chains today are not the same as they were 20, or even 10 years ago. And they will be different from the ones required in the future. It’s almost impossible to precisely predict what leadership capabilities will be needed going forward. The best course of action: Be agile and ready to respond to whatever happens.

“The Seven Principles of Supply Chain Management” provides a clear and compelling case for excellence in supply chain management, the insights provided here remain remarkably fresh even ten years after its original published date.

Blame it on the Internet. Blame it on Amazon. Whatever the reason, there is no debate that shoppers have different expectations today than in the past and that retailers are being forced to rethink how they interact with shoppers and the distribution center is in the middle of a transformation in the way retailers interact with customers.

There is broad agreement that inventory should be optimized to properly match demand. Yet achieving this continues to prove difficult for many companies. The insight and best practices offered here will help you understand the importance of sound inventory practices and put your inventory optimization initiative on a success track.

Dan Kara, Founder of RoboBusiness, contributing analyst to Robotics Business Review (RBR) and President of Electra Studios, discusses the very latest advances in robotic technology for a variety of material handling applications and how these solutions are improving productivity and quality levels.