Humanitarian logistics measures to help rebuild the United States' fourth most populous city
and the Texas Gulf Coast are starting to take shape.
In the immediate term, the
American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), which connects logistics resources with
organizations involved in disaster recovery efforts, is aiding residents of Houston, Texas,
and the state's coastal regions who have been displaced by Hurricane, then tropical storm,
Harvey. Kathy Fulton, ALAN's executive director, put out multiple calls today for 10,000
to 100,000 square feet of warehouse space in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, Texas—cities
that will receive tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of refugees in the coming days.
There, relief organizations can store materiel that will be needed for individuals and
families to survive in hastily erected shelters.
Once the floodwaters recede and displaced people are provided with temporary housing,
ALAN's long-term work will begin in earnest. Fulton estimates a network of large warehouses will dot
the region to help provide survivors with whatever is necessary to restore their lives. In
addition, a huge, "pop-up" type warehouse and DC, the location of which has yet to be
determined, will spring up where volunteers will accept donations not designated to a
specific relief group. There, they will repackage and palletize the goods as efficiently
as possible and distribute them. A state agency will head up the operation and contract
out its day-to-day management. Relief organizations can use the warehouse to store and pull
goods as needed, Fulton said. Vehicles ranging from private cars to 53-foot trailers will
be recruited for inbound moves to the warehouse, while trucks hired by relief
organizations will largely handle outbound moves, she said.
Years of work lie ahead in Houston for ALAN, Fulton said. The group still works in
areas of the Northeast devastated by Superstorm Sandy nearly five years ago.
For now, ALAN and everybody else can only wait for Harvey to run its cours By the time Harvey departs sometime Thursday or Friday, it is expected to have dropped 50 inches of rain on greater Houston, or as much as the area gets in a year.
The Port of Houston will remain closed today, and Houston's two main airports, George
W. Bush Intercontinental and William P. Hobby, are closed until further notice. Over 500
roadways in southeast Texas were experiencing flood conditions as of this morning,
according to
a post on the Texas Department of Transportation website. Rail operations
have been hamstrung by high waters and the inability of trucks to pick up and deliver
goods. Union Pacific Corp. (UP), the Omaha, Neb.-based railroad whose network feeds
directly into the area, has suspended operations from Brownsville, Texas, to Lake Charles,
La., due to high water and storm damage. UP said it can't access or inspect tracks and
facilities in the Houston area until the storms move out and the flooding recedes.
UP said the opening of routes through San Antonio will allow it to run north-south trains
between San Antonio and Hearne, Texas, 120 miles northwest of Houston near College Station.
UP's Laredo, Texas, gateway remains open to interchange traffic with the Mexican railroads, it said.
Atlanta-based UPS Inc., the nation's largest transportation company, has not changed its
status since late Monday when it said 728 zip codes in Texas and four in neighboring
Louisiana were experience some form of disruption.
The Chicago-based information technology provider project44 said it will offer
its less-than-truckload (LTL) transit time and visibility products as well as its
truckload visibility product free of charge for the next 30 days so that shippers can
gain visibility into what has become a compromised trucking network and make informed
inventory management decisions. "Real-time visibility can help optimize transportation
routes during natural disasters," the company said in a statement. "Accurate, up-to-date
transit times allow shippers to better forecast inventory availability and deliver
contingency plans for delayed shipments."
Consultancy FTR said that Harvey will "strongly affect" more than 7 percent
of U.S. trucking, with about 10 percent of all trucking operations impaired to some
degree during the first week. A portion of the country's trucking network will be
compromised for as long as two weeks, FTR said. After a month, about 2 percent of
the national network and one-quarter of the regional system—skewed heavily towards
the Gulf—will be impacted. Regional services will absorb most of the dislocation,
FTR said.
Jason Kra kicked off his presentation at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) EDGE Conference on Tuesday morning with a question: “How do we use data in assessing what countries we should be investing in for future supply chain decisions?” As president of Li & Fung where he oversees the supply chain solutions company’s wholesale and distribution business in the U.S., Kra understands that many companies are looking for ways to assess risk in their supply chains and diversify their operations beyond China. To properly assess risk, however, you need quality data and a decision model, he said.
In January 2024, in addition to his full-time job, Kra joined American University’s Kogod School of Business as an adjunct professor of the school’s master’s program where he decided to find some answers to his above question about data.
For his research, he created the following situation: “How can data be used to assess the attractiveness of scalable apparel-producing countries for planning based on stability and predictability, and what factors should be considered in the decision-making process to de-risk country diversification decisions?”
Since diversification and resilience have been hot topics in the supply chain space since the U.S.’s 2017 trade war with China, Kra sought to find a way to apply a scientific method to assess supply chain risk. He specifically wanted to answer the following questions:
1.Which methodology is most appropriate to investigate when selecting a country to produce apparel in based on weighted criteria?
2.What criteria should be used to evaluate a production country’s suitability for scalable manufacturing as a future investment?
3.What are the weights (relative importance) of each criterion?
4.How can this methodology be utilized to assess the suitability of production countries for scalable apparel manufacturing and to create a country ranking?
5.Will the criteria and methodology apply to other industries?
After creating a list of criteria and weight rankings based on importance, Kra reached out to 70 senior managers with 20+ years of experience and C-suite executives to get their feedback. What he found was a big difference in criteria/weight rankings between the C-suite and senior managers.
“That huge gap is a good area for future research,” said Kra. “If you don’t have alignment between your C-suite and your senior managers who are doing a lot of the execution, you’re never going to achieve the goals you set as a company.”
With the research results, Kra created a decision model for country selection that can be applied to any industry and customized based on a company’s unique needs. That model includes discussing the data findings, creating a list of diversification countries, and finally, looking at future trends to factor in (like exponential technology, speed, types of supply chains and geopolitics, and sustainability).
After showcasing his research data to the EDGE audience, Kra ended his presentation by sharing some key takeaways from his research:
China diversification strategies alone are not enough. The world will continue to be volatile and disruptive. Country and region diversification is the only protection.
Managers need to balance trade-offs between what is optimal and what is acceptable regarding supply chain decisions. Decision-makers need to find the best country at the lowest price, with the most dependability.
There is a disconnect or misalignment between C-suite executives and senior managers who execute the strategy. So further education and alignment is critical.
Data-driven decision-making for your company/industry: This can be done for any industry—the data is customizable, and there are many “free” sources you can access to put together regional and country data. Utilizing data helps eliminate path dependency (for example, relying on a lean or just-in-time inventory) and keeps executives and managers aligned.
“Look at the business you envision in the future,” said Kra, “and make that your model for today.”
Turning around a failing warehouse operation demands a similar methodology to how emergency room doctors triage troubled patients at the hospital, a speaker said today in a session at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP)’s EDGE Conference in Nashville.
There are many reasons that a warehouse might start to miss its targets, such as a sudden volume increase or a new IT system implementation gone wrong, said Adri McCaskill, general manager for iPlan’s Warehouse Management business unit. But whatever the cause, the basic rescue strategy is the same: “Just like medicine, you do triage,” she said. “The most life-threatening problem we try to solve first. And only then, once we’ve stopped the bleeding, we can move on.”
In McCaskill’s comparison, just as a doctor might have to break some ribs through energetic CPR to get a patient’s heart beating again, a failing warehouse might need to recover by “breaking some ribs” in a business sense, such as making management changes or stock write-downs.
Once the business has made some stopgap solutions to “stop the bleeding,” it can proceed to a disciplined recovery, she said. And to reach their final goal, managers can use the classic tools of people, process, and technology to improve what she called the three most important key performance indicators (KPIs): on time in full (OTIF), inventory accuracy, and staff turnover.
CSCMP EDGE attendees gathered Tuesday afternoon for an update and outlook on the truckload (TL) market, which is on the upswing following the longest down cycle in recorded history. Kevin Adamik of RXO (formerly Coyote Logistics), offered an overview of truckload market cycles, highlighting major trends from the recent freight recession and providing an update on where the TL cycle is now.
EDGE 2024, sponsored by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), is taking place this week in Nashville.
Citing data from the Coyote Curve index (which measures year-over-year changes in spot market rates) and other sources, Adamik outlined the dynamics of the TL market. He explained that the last cycle—which lasted from about 2019 to 2024—was longer than the typical three to four-year market cycle, marked by volatile conditions spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic. That cycle is behind us now, he said, adding that the market has reached equilibrium and is headed toward an inflationary environment.
Adamik also told attendees that he expects the new TL cycle to be marked by far less volatility, with a return to more typical conditions. And he offered a slate of supply and demand trends to note as the industry moves into the new cycle.
Supply trends include:
Carrier operating authorities are declining;
Employment in the trucking industry is declining;
Private fleets have expanded, but the expansion has stopped;
Truckload orders are falling.
Demand trends include:
Consumer spending is stable, but is still more service-centric and less goods-intensive;
After a steep decline, imports are on the rise;
Freight volumes have been sluggish but are showing signs of life.
CSCMP EDGE runs through Wednesday, October 2, at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Hotel & Resort.
The relationship between shippers and third-party logistics services providers (3PLs) is at the core of successful supply chain management—so getting that relationship right is vital. A panel of industry experts from both sides of the aisle weighed in on what it takes to create strong 3PL/shipper partnerships on day two of the CSCMP EDGE conference, being held this week in Nashville.
Trust, empathy, and transparency ranked high on the list of key elements required for success in all aspects of the partnership, but there are some specifics for each step of the journey. The panel recommended a handful of actions that should take place early on, including:
Establish relationships.
For 3PLs, understand and get to the heart of the shipper’s data.
Also for 3PLs: Understand the shipper’s reason for outsourcing to a 3PL, along with the shipper’s ultimate goals.
Understand company cultures and be sure they align.
Nurture long-term relationships with good communication.
For shippers, be transparent so that the 3PL fully understands your business.
And there are also some “non-negotiables” when it comes to managing the relationship:
3PLs must demonstrate their commitment to engaging with the shipper’s personnel.
3PLs must also demonstrate their commitment to process discipline, continuous improvement, and innovation.
Shippers should ensure that they understand the 3PL’s demonstrated implementation capabilities—ask to visit established clients.
Trust—which takes longer to establish than both sides may expect.
EDGE 2024 is sponsored by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and runs through Wednesday, October 2, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville.
While the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' 2024 EDGE Conference & Exhibition is coming to a close on Wednesday, October 2, in Nashville, Tennessee, mark your calendars for next year's premier supply chain event.
The 2025 conference will take place in National Harbor, Maryland. To register for next year's event—and take advantage of an early-bird discount of $600**—visit https://www.cscmpedge.org/website/62261/edge-2025/.
**EDGE EARLY BIRD Terms & Conditions: Promotion is for the EDGE 2025 conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Offer valid for Premier and Basic Members only. Offer excludes Student, Young Professional, Educator, and Corporate registration types. Offer limited to one per customer. Offer is not retroactive and may not be combined with other offers. Offer is nontransferable and may not be resold. Valid through October 31, 2024.