Creating and implementing a sound supply chain strategy is a complex challenge; the need to create a sound global supply chain strategy only magnifies that challenge. Georgia Tech designed its "Global Supply Chain Strategy" executive education course for supply chain professionals who are preparing themselves and their companies for broader and more challenging responsibilities in global supply chain management. Participants will learn how to manage and understand key global supply chain processes as well as the risk factors that affect them.
They will also develop a deeper understanding of how to manage relationships with global supply chain partners, including logistics service providers. CSCMP is a co-sponsor of this event and members receive a discount.
Program: Global Supply Chain Strategy Sponsors: Georgia Institute of Technology Supply Chain & Logistics Institute and CSCMP Location: Atlanta, Georgia, USA Dates: June 8-10, 2010 Info:www.scl.gatech.edu
The theory behind your practice
Many supply chain and logistics managers have learned about their field of expertise from doing their jobs day in and day out, not from sitting in a classroom. Knowing the theory and principles of the logistics discipline, however, can sometimes help you take your supply chain and logistics performance to the next level. Michigan State's "Supply Chain Logistics Management" course is geared for experienced executives who have not had the benefit of formal logistics training. Attendees will learn to identify and understand the logistics and supply chain trade-offs associated with global operations. CSCMP is a co-sponsor of this program.
Program: Supply Chain Logistics Management Sponsors: Michigan State University and CSCMP Location: East Lansing, Michigan, USA Dates: May 9-14, 2010 Info: www.bus.msu.edu/execed/programs/openEnrollment.cfm
Real-life supply chain stories
You can hear about real-life supply chain practices at the three-day certificate program offered by Rutgers Business School's Center for Supply Chain Management and co-sponsored by CSCMP. Many of the presenters are senior corporate supply chain executives with extensive practical experience.
They and other lecturers will cover the major aspects of supply chain management, including strategy, sourcing and procurement, logistics, operations, and organizational alignment. Participants will learn the principles of supply chain management strategy and how to link supply chain management to their overall business strategy. They also will study how to track supply chain performance and best manage both internal and external relationships.
Program: Strategies for Designing and Leading Your End-to-End Supply Chain Sponsors: Rutgers Business School and CSCMP Location: Piscataway, New Jersey, USA Dates: June 16-18, 2010 Info:https://scmcenter.rutgers.edu/cp
CSCMP, ICOR offer online courses
CSCMP has partnered with The International Consortium for Organizational Resilience (ICOR) to create one of the world's first e-learning courses on supply chain risk management. "Supply Chain Risk Mitigation" is an introductory course that focuses on ways to create risk mitigation strategies that add resiliency without increasing operating costs. The course runs over a two-week timeframe. Participants can review the course instructional material when it is convenient for them and then participate in an online discussion.
This is just one of several online classes that CSCMP has organized. CSCMP has also designed a course on RFID essentials and has partnered with Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management to create one on Six Sigma methodology. More information about the risk management class and other online education opportunities can be found at cscmp.org.
"Applying Lean Principles Across the Supply Chain" introduces a systemic approach for applying lean thinking to supply chain challenges. This executive education course from Penn State University (co-sponsored by CSCMP) offers practical, hands-on insights from industry leaders such as Kraft Foods and Dell. Participants will learn lean principles and tools that can help them achieve greater supply chain speed and efficiency. They will also discover how to extend these practices beyond their enterprises to suppliers and customers.
Program: Applying Lean Principles Across the Supply Chain Sponsors: Pennsylvania State University and CSCMP Location: University Park, Pennsylvania, USA Dates: June 7-11, 2010 and November 29-December 3, 2010 Info:www.smeal.psu.edu/psep/lsc.html
A better way to outsource
Instructors at the University of Tennessee promise that their "Vested Outsourcing" course will fundamentally change your approach to procuring outsourced services such as third-party logistics, supply chain management, information technology support, and facilities management.
Today, most companies approach their outsourcing relationship from a transactional perspective; they purchase activities or transactions from their suppliers. But the concept taught in this course—"performance-based outsourcing"— looks at how to create an outsourcing agreement that focuses on results instead of on activities. Attendees will leave the class, which is co-sponsored by CSCMP, well-grounded in a five-step process and best practices for implementing a performance-based outsourcing agreement.
Program: Vested Outsourcing Sponsors: University of Tennessee Center for Executive Education and CSCMP Location: Knoxville, Tennessee, USA Dates: June 8-10, 2010 and October 26-28, 2010 Info:https://thecenter.utk.edu
Learn best practices from the best
Participants at CSCMP's new Process Standards Workshop will leave the course armed with more than 300 supply chain best practices culled from leading companies such as Coca-Cola, Cummins, International Paper, and Welch's. Better yet, they will know how to benchmark their current performance against these industry leaders. Participants will learn how to evaluate the risks and rewards of potential supply chain initiatives and how to identify improvements that will increase financial performance.
Instructors will cover how to assess a process, decide which parts need to be improved, develop a roadmap for improvement, create an implementation plan, and build a business case for the initiative. As part of the registration fee, attendees receive the newly published second edition of CSCMP's Supply Chain Management Process Standards book.
Program: Process Standards Workshop Sponsor: CSCMP Location: Lombard (Chicago), Illinois, USA Dates: May 13-14, 2010 and November 11-12, 2010 Info:https://cscmp.org
Bridge the gap between action and strategy
When CSCMP created its Strategic Supply Chain Management Workshop, the organization wanted to help supply chain managers bridge the gap between managing the functional elements of their supply chains and creating and implementing an optimal supply chain strategy. The course's lectures, presentations, and exercises focus on what makes a successful strategy: understanding each supply chain partner's needs, strengths, and weaknesses as well as how these competencies can best be aligned.
This course is designed for general managers and supply chain directors, particularly those who have multiple functional responsibilities.
Participants will work in groups to examine case
studies and exercises, exploring the breadth of the supply chain and its relevance to overall business. They will hear specific, real-world examples from recognized experts in the field. The sessions are interactive, and instructors are prepared to answer questions about specific industries and/or geographic regions.
Program: Strategic Supply Chain Management Sponsor: CSCMP Location: Lombard (Chicago), Illinois, USA Dates: April 12-13, 2010 Info:https://cscmp.org/events/strategic-scm
Creating a coherent supply chain picture
Having a coherent vision of what effective supply chain management entails can help your company achieve its strategic goals. The Ohio State University, working in partnership with Cranfield University, has created an executive education course on supply chain management that provides a framework that can help guide your efforts. This framework, created by The Global Supply Chain Forum, consists of eight essential supply chain processes: customer relationship management, supplier relationship management, customer service management, demand management, order management, manufacturing flow management, product development and commercialization, and returns management. This course is co-sponsored by CSCMP.
Program: Supply Chain Management: Processes, Partnerships, Performance Sponsors: The Ohio State University, Cranfield University, and CSCMP Locations and Dates: Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, USA: April 19-23, 2010
Cranfield, England, U.K.: May 10-14, 2010 Info:www.fisher.osu.edu/centers/scm/executive-education
The launch is based on “Amazon Nova,” the company’s new generation of foundation models, the company said in a blog post. Data scientists use foundation models (FMs) to develop machine learning (ML) platforms more quickly than starting from scratch, allowing them to create artificial intelligence applications capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks, since they were trained on a broad spectrum of generalized data, Amazon says.
The new models are integrated with Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that makes FMs from AI companies and Amazon available for use through a single API. Using Amazon Bedrock, customers can experiment with and evaluate Amazon Nova models, as well as other FMs, to determine the best model for an application.
Calling the launch “the next step in our AI journey,” the company says Amazon Nova has the ability to process text, image, and video as prompts, so customers can use Amazon Nova-powered generative AI applications to understand videos, charts, and documents, or to generate videos and other multimedia content.
“Inside Amazon, we have about 1,000 Gen AI applications in motion, and we’ve had a bird’s-eye view of what application builders are still grappling with,” Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence, said in a release. “Our new Amazon Nova models are intended to help with these challenges for internal and external builders, and provide compelling intelligence and content generation while also delivering meaningful progress on latency, cost-effectiveness, customization, information grounding, and agentic capabilities.”
The new Amazon Nova models available in Amazon Bedrock include:
Amazon Nova Micro, a text-only model that delivers the lowest latency responses at very low cost.
Amazon Nova Lite, a very low-cost multimodal model that is lightning fast for processing image, video, and text inputs.
Amazon Nova Pro, a highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide range of tasks.
Amazon Nova Premier, the most capable of Amazon’s multimodal models for complex reasoning tasks and for use as the best teacher for distilling custom models
Amazon Nova Canvas, a state-of-the-art image generation model.
Amazon Nova Reel, a state-of-the-art video generation model that can transform a single image input into a brief video with the prompt: dolly forward.
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in November, continuing a steady growth pattern that began earlier this year and signaling a return to seasonality after several years of fluctuating conditions, according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index report (LMI), released today.
The November LMI registered 58.4, down slightly from October’s reading of 58.9, which was the highest level in two years. The LMI is a monthly gauge of business conditions across warehousing and logistics markets; a reading above 50 indicates growth and a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
“The overall index has been very consistent in the past three months, with readings of 58.6, 58.9, and 58.4,” LMI analyst Zac Rogers, associate professor of supply chain management at Colorado State University, wrote in the November LMI report. “This plateau is slightly higher than a similar plateau of consistency earlier in the year when May to August saw four readings between 55.3 and 56.4. Seasonally speaking, it is consistent that this later year run of readings would be the highest all year.”
Separately, Rogers said the end-of-year growth reflects the return to a healthy holiday peak, which started when inventory levels expanded in late summer and early fall as retailers began stocking up to meet consumer demand. Pandemic-driven shifts in consumer buying behavior, inflation, and economic uncertainty contributed to volatile peak season conditions over the past four years, with the LMI swinging from record-high growth in late 2020 and 2021 to slower growth in 2022 and contraction in 2023.
“The LMI contracted at this time a year ago, so basically [there was] no peak season,” Rogers said, citing inflation as a drag on demand. “To have a normal November … [really] for the first time in five years, justifies what we’ve seen all these companies doing—building up inventory in a sustainable, seasonal way.
“Based on what we’re seeing, a lot of supply chains called it right and were ready for healthy holiday season, so far.”
The LMI has remained in the mid to high 50s range since January—with the exception of April, when the index dipped to 52.9—signaling strong and consistent demand for warehousing and transportation services.
The LMI is a monthly survey of logistics managers from across the country. It tracks industry growth overall and across eight areas: inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity, utilization, and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices. The report is released monthly by researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).
Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
Grocers and retailers are struggling to get their systems back online just before the winter holiday peak, following a software hack that hit the supply chain software provider Blue Yonder this week.
The ransomware attack is snarling inventory distribution patterns because of its impact on systems such as the employee scheduling system for coffee stalwart Starbucks, according to a published report. Scottsdale, Arizona-based Blue Yonder provides a wide range of supply chain software, including warehouse management system (WMS), transportation management system (TMS), order management and commerce, network and control tower, returns management, and others.
Blue Yonder today acknowledged the disruptions, saying they were the result of a ransomware incident affecting its managed services hosted environment. The company has established a dedicated cybersecurity incident update webpage to communicate its recovery progress, but it had not been updated for nearly two days as of Tuesday afternoon. “Since learning of the incident, the Blue Yonder team has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress in their recovery process. We have implemented several defensive and forensic protocols,” a Blue Yonder spokesperson said in an email.
The timing of the attack suggests that hackers may have targeted Blue Yonder in a calculated attack based on the upcoming Thanksgiving break, since many U.S. organizations downsize their security staffing on holidays and weekends, according to a statement from Dan Lattimer, VP of Semperis, a New Jersey-based computer and network security firm.
“While details on the specifics of the Blue Yonder attack are scant, it is yet another reminder how damaging supply chain disruptions become when suppliers are taken offline. Kudos to Blue Yonder for dealing with this cyberattack head on but we still don’t know how far reaching the business disruptions will be in the UK, U.S. and other countries,” Lattimer said. “Now is time for organizations to fight back against threat actors. Deciding whether or not to pay a ransom is a personal decision that each company has to make, but paying emboldens threat actors and throws more fuel onto an already burning inferno. Simply, it doesn’t pay-to-pay,” he said.
The incident closely followed an unrelated cybersecurity issue at the grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, which has been recovering from impacts to the Stop & Shop chain that it across the U.S. Northeast region. In a statement apologizing to customers for the inconvenience of the cybersecurity issue, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize said its top priority is the security of its customers, associates and partners, and that the company’s internal IT security staff was working with external cybersecurity experts and law enforcement to speed recovery. “Our teams are taking steps to assess and mitigate the issue. This includes taking some systems offline to help protect them. This issue and subsequent mitigating actions have affected certain Ahold Delhaize USA brands and services including a number of pharmacies and certain e-commerce operations,” the company said.
Editor's note:This article was revised on November 27 to indicate that the cybersecurity issue at Ahold Delhaize was unrelated to the Blue Yonder hack.
The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."