Here’s our roundup of events at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ annual CSCMP EDGE 2021 conference held in September in Atlanta, Georgia.
After going to a virtual format last year during the pandemic, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ annual EDGE conference was back in person this year. Attendees at the event, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in September, came both to gain a glimpse of the future of the discipline and to find solutions that they could implement today.
While there, attendees enjoyed keynote sessions, educational seminars, the annual Academic Research Symposium, networking receptions, and the Supply Chain Exchange Exhibition, which showcased supply chain technologies, equipment, and services.
Not able to attend the conference this year or unable to sample everything that was offered? This roundup will help you fill in some of the gaps.
CSCMP’s 2021 awards recognize industry excellence
Every year at its annual conference, CSCMP honors individuals and organizations that are helping to push the supply chain discipline to new heights. The following are some of the recognitions given out this year.
2021 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Dale Rogers, ON Semiconductor professor of business in the supply chain department at Arizona State University.
The 2021 inductees into CSCMP’s Supply Chain Hall of Fame were Rogers and John “Jock” Menzies, founder of American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN).
Gail Rutkowski, the outgoing president of the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC), was honored for demonstrating excellence in transportation and/or logistics strategies with the NASSTRAC Shipper of the Year Award, which was renamed the Gail Rutkowski Transportation Excellence Award, in her honor.
Gleb Mikulich, a supply chain specialist at the supply chain software company ToolsGroup received the 2021 Emerging Leader Award for outstanding supply chain professionals age 32 and under.
Rebekah Brau of Brigham Young University won the Doctoral Dissertation Award for her paper “Integrating Systems, Processes, and Human Judgment: Three Essays on Value Creation with Supply Chain Analytics.”
Bernard J. La Londe Best Paper Award was given to Travis Tokar of Texas Christian University and Brent D. Williams and Brian S. Fugate, both from University of Arkansas, for “I Heart Logistics—Just Don’t Ask Me to Pay for It: Online Shopper Behavior in Response to a Delivery Carrier Upgrade and Subsequent Shipping Charge Increase.”
Marat Davletshin and Susan Golicic of Colorado State University received the E. Grosvenor Plowman Award for their research paper, “The Ties that Pay: The Impact of Buyer-Supplier Network Closure and Gender Diversity of Boards of Directors on Sustained Revenue Growth.”
2021Teaching Innovation Award was presented to Shane J. Schvaneveldt, Francois Giraud-Carrier, and Evan Barlow of Weber State University for their submission entitled: “Exploring Supply Chain Disruptions: An Active Learning Exercise for Connecting High School Students to SCM.”
CSCMP session sampler
With three keynote presentations and over 100 educational sessions, CSCMP EDGE 2021 attendees had a wide variety of educational opportunities to choose from. Here are highlights of just a few.
Supply chain miracle. The development of the COVID-19 vaccine in nine months has been hailed as a medical miracle. Just as much of a miracle? Building the supply chain that manufactures and distributes that vaccine. Jim Cafone, vice president of strategy and business operations for Pfizer, detailed the challenges the company faced during the opening keynote session.
From the beginning of the pandemic, Pfizer’s focus was on collaboration and how the company could contribute to eradicating the pandemic. “We never used the word ‘compete,’” said Cafone. “We were willing to share our tools and insight with anyone we could.” This commitment to collaboration included a willingness to share Pfizer’s significant global manufacturing capacity.
The biggest hurdle was the need for speed. Decisions were made in a rapid-fire fashion and traditional timeframes were crunched. For example, instead of developing the new manufacturing process in a standard, serial fashion, all of the stages occurred in parallel. This reduced the creation of the manufacturing process from 24 months to six.
Reshore or onshore? That is the question. Many executives are growing concerned about their dependence on other nations for critical goods and supplies. As a result, a number of companies are assessing whether reshoring should be part of their future strategic plans.
“Learning how you can make better decisions on sourcing onshore and offshore is critical,” noted Harry Moser, founder and president of the nonprofit organization Reshoring Initiative during an educational session.
To help make the decision-making process easier, the Reshoring Initiative has developed a total cost of ownership (TCO) tool that looks at 29 cost factors and includes freight rates from 17 countries. This free, customizable tool is available online at reshorenow.org.
Warehouse space shortage to continue. Soaring e-commerce shopping rates have combined with building delays in many regions to cause a crunch in the supply of new warehouse space, explained a panel of real estate experts during a session on industrial real estate.
The pandemic has triggered a “firestorm” of demand for distribution centers (DCs), due to increased online shopping, a corresponding jump in product returns, and a shift from just-in-time inventory management to greater stockpiling of goods, said Stephanie Rodriguez, vice president of leasing and development for Duke Realty.
Despite all the challenges, demand for warehouse space will continue to rise because of basic economics, said John Morris, executive managing director at the real estate firm CBRE. Transportation costs represent between half and two-thirds of logistics spending, so retailers are highly motivated to rent DC space close to their customers, he said.
Consumer-focused supply chain. The supply chain is increasingly shaping the consumer experience and playing a significant role in customer satisfaction. That realization needs to start guiding how companies structure their supply chain operations, according to a panel of experts who presented at CSCMP. “We should all be thinking about the consumer marketplace, not just retailers,” said Terry Esper, associate professor of logistics at The Ohio State University.
According to Esper, taking a consumer-centric approach to the supply chain does not mean that companies should abandon their focus on their direct customer. Instead, they should adopt a perspective similar to bifocal glasses, with one lens focused on their customer and one lens on the consumer.
The shift to consumer-centricity, however, will not necessarily be easy. It will require a cultural change, including different key performance indicators.
Ocean freight tsunami. It’s been a rough ride for ocean freight of late. Container ships wait for days to dock at ports, and labor shortages keep containers from being unloaded. Even once the containers are unloaded, there aren’t enough drivers to haul them away. And there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight, according to panelists who presented during a session on the problems facing ocean freight at CSCMP EDGE.
“Until consumption starts to slow down, we won’t see relief,” said Joshua Bowen, senior director of trade development at CEVA Logistics.
The panelists suggested transportation providers to use air freight to help with capacity issues, look for third-party solutions, invest in transloading to add capacity, and find a way to keep trucks moving by making driving more “trucker friendly.”
For importers and exporters, the panel advised leaning into relationships with providers, building trust by being transparent and living up to your commitments, and finding locations where you can ground containers and get them off the maritime terminals.
The venture-backed fleet telematics technology provider Platform Science will acquire a suite of “global transportation telematics business units” from supply chain technology provider Trimble Inc., the firms said Sunday.
Trimble's other core transportation business units — Enterprise, Maps, Vusion and Transporeon — are not included in the proposed transaction and will remain part of Trimble's Transportation & Logistics segment, with a continued focus on priority growth areas following completion of the proposed transaction.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed but as part of this agreement, Colorado-based Trimble will become a shareholder in Platform Science's expanded business. Specifically, Trimble will have a 32.5% stake in the newly expanded global Platform Science business and will receive a Platform Science board seat. The company joins C.R. England, Cummins, Daimler Truck, PACCAR, Prologis, RyderVentures, and Schneider as a key strategic investor in Platform Science along with financial investors 8VC, Activant Capital, BDT & MSD Partners, Softbank, and NewRoad Capital Partners.
According to San Diego-based Platform Science, the proposed transaction aims to enhance driver experience, fleet safety, efficiency, and compliance by combining two cutting-edge in-cab commercial vehicle ecosystems, which will give customers access to more applications and offerings.
From Trimble customers’ point of view, they will continue to enjoy the benefits of their Trimble solutions, with the added flexibility of the Virtual Vehicle platform from Platform Science. That means Virtual Vehicle-enabled fleets will receive access to the Virtual Vehicle Marketplace, offering hundreds of new and expanded applications, software, and solution providers focused on innovating and improving drivers' quality of life and fleet performance.
Meanwhile, Platform Science customers will enjoy the added choice of Trimble's remaining portfolio of transportation solutions which will be available on the Virtual Vehicle platform, the partners said.
"We believe combining our global transportation telematics portfolio with Platform Science's will further advance fleet mobility and provide our customers with a broader portfolio of solutions to solve industry problems," Rob Painter, president and CEO of Trimble, said in a release. "Increased collaboration between the new Platform Science business and Trimble's remaining transportation businesses will enhance our ability to provide positive outcomes for our global customers of commercial mapping, transportation management, freight procurement, and visibility solutions. This deal will result in significant synergies along with tremendous opportunities for employees to continue to grow in a more-competitive business."
The acquisition comes just five months after Platform Science raised $125 million in growth capital from some of the biggest names in freight trucking, saying the money would help accelerate innovation in the commercial transportation sector.
Nearly one-third of American consumers have increased their secondhand purchases in the past year, revealing a jump in “recommerce” according to a buyer survey from ShipStation, a provider of web-based shipping and order fulfillment solutions.
The number comes from a survey of 500 U.S. consumers showing that nearly one in four (23%) Americans lack confidence in making purchases over $200 in the next six months. Due to economic uncertainty, savvy shoppers are looking for ways to save money without sacrificing quality or style, the research found.
Younger shoppers are leading the charge in that trend, with 59% of Gen Z and 48% of Millennials buying pre-owned items weekly or monthly. That rate makes Gen Z nearly twice as likely to buy second hand compared to older generations.
The primary reason that shoppers say they have increased their recommerce habits is lower prices (74%), followed by the thrill of finding unique or rare items (38%) and getting higher quality for a lower price (28%). Only 14% of Americans cite environmental concerns as a primary reason they shop second-hand.
Despite the challenge of adjusting to the new pattern, recommerce represents a strategic opportunity for businesses to capture today’s budget-minded shoppers and foster long-term loyalty, Austin, Texas-based ShipStation said.
For example, retailers don’t have to sell used goods to capitalize on the secondhand boom. Instead, they can offer trade-in programs swapping discounts or store credit for shoppers’ old items. And they can improve product discoverability to help customers—particularly older generations—find what they’re looking for.
Other ways for retailers to connect with recommerce shoppers are to improve shipping practices. According to ShipStation:
70% of shoppers won’t return to a brand if shipping is too expensive.
51% of consumers are turned off by late deliveries
40% of shoppers won’t return to a retailer again if the packaging is bad.
The “CMA CGM Startup Awards”—created in collaboration with BFM Business and La Tribune—will identify the best innovations to accelerate its transformation, the French company said.
Specifically, the company will select the best startup among the applicants, with clear industry transformation objectives focused on environmental performance, competitiveness, and quality of life at work in each of the three areas:
Shipping: Enabling safer, more efficient, and sustainable navigation through innovative technological solutions.
Logistics: Reinventing the global supply chain with smart and sustainable logistics solutions.
Media: Transform content creation, and customer engagement with innovative media technologies and strategies.
Three winners will be selected during a final event organized on November 15 at the Orange Vélodrome Stadium in Marseille, during the 2nd Artificial Intelligence Marseille (AIM) forum organized by La Tribune and BFM Business. The selection will be made by a jury chaired by Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman and CEO of the Group, and including members of the executive committee representing the various sectors of CMA CGM.
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in August, though growth slowed slightly from July, according to the most recent Logistics Manager’s Index report (LMI), released this week.
The August LMI registered 56.4, down from July’s reading of 56.6 but consistent with readings over the past four months. The August reading represents nine straight months of growth across the logistics industry.
The LMI is a monthly gauge of economic activity across warehousing, transportation, and logistics markets. An LMI above 50 indicates expansion, and a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
Inventory levels saw a marked change in August, increasing more than six points compared to July and breaking a three-month streak of contraction. The LMI researchers said this suggests that after running inventories down, companies are now building them back up in anticipation of fourth-quarter demand. It also represents a return to more typical growth patterns following the accelerated demand for logistics services during the Covid-19 pandemic and the lows of the recent freight recession.
“This suggests a return to traditional patterns of seasonality that we have not seen since pre-COVID,” the researchers wrote in the monthly LMI report, published Tuesday, adding that the buildup is somewhat tempered by increases in warehousing capacity and transportation capacity.
The LMI report is based on 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).
That hiring surge marks a significant jump in relation to the company’s nearly 17,000 current employees across North America, adding 21% more workers.
That increase is necessary because U.S. holiday sales in 2023 increased 3.9% year-over-year as consumer spending grew even amidst uncertain economic times and trends like inflation and consumer price sensitivity. Looking at the coming peak, a similar pattern is projected for this year, with shoppers forecasted to drive a 4.8% increase in holiday retail sales for 2024, Geodis said, citing data from Emarketer.
To attract the extra workforce, Geodis says it will offer competitive wages, peak premium pay incentives, peak and referral bonuses, an expedited payment option, and flexible schedules. And it’s using an AI-powered chatbot named Sophie to serve as a virtual recruiting assistant.
“We acknowledge the immense responsibility we have to our customers to deliver exceptional service every day, and this is especially true during peak season,” Anthony Jordan, GEODIS in Americas Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said in a release. “Because peak season is the most business-critical sales period of the year for many of our retail clients, expanding our workforce is vital to ensure we have a flexible, dynamic team that can handle anticipated surges in demand.”