In this excerpt from Episode 1, supply chain pioneers Joseph Andraski, George Gecowets, Roger Kallock, and Mark Richards discuss how the discipline evolved from physical distribution into supply chain management.
How did the discipline of supply chain management come to be? Four individuals instrumental in shaping the profession—Joseph Andraski, George Gecowets, Roger Kallock, and Mark Richards—came together for a panel discussion on how supply chain management has evolved over the years. Their experience in the field and their decades-long involvement with CSCMP provide them with a valuable perspective on the way companies have viewed what we now know as supply chain management.
Active in CSCMP since 1976,Joseph Andraski is president of the consulting firm Collaborative Energizer. He has been the president and CEO of the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions (VICS), and prior to that held executive positions in logistics and supply chain at Nabisco. He received CSCMP's Distinguished Service Award in 1995.
George Gecowets joined CSCMP in 1964, one year after its formation. He later became the organization's first full-time executive director. At the time of his retirement in 2001, Gecowets, the 1988 recipient of CSCMP's Distinguished Service Award, held the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Roger Kallock served as U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and material readiness from 1998 to 2001. Currently chairman of Chagrin Consulting, he has worked in both consulting and in industry. A member of CSCMP since 1968, he received the organization's Distinguished Service Award in 1990.
Mark Richards, currently vice president of Associated Warehouses Inc., has been very involved in CSCMP since he began his career in the field some 34 years ago. His first job was with the public warehouse company Distribution Centers Inc. He later went on to work for such companies as Nabisco, Gillette, and Oral-B.
The interview was conducted by CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly Group Editorial Director Mitch Mac Donald.
A brief history of CSCMP
The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) was originally founded as the National Council of Physical Distribution Management (NCPDM) in January 1963. The NCPDM was formed by a visionary group of educators, consultants, and managers who envisioned the integration of transportation, warehousing, and inventory as the future of the discipline.
In 1985, NCPDM's name was changed to the Council of Logistics Management (CLM) to reflect the evolution of physical distribution into logistics management. Over the coming years, CLM greatly expanded its international membership to become a true global organization.
Twenty years later, in 2005, the organization was renamed the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). This change acknowledged the evolving needs of the council's members, whose responsibilities had expanded within their companies and the profession to encompass not only logistics, but also procurement, manufacturing operations, and sales and marketing functions.
CSCMP remains dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of research and knowledge of supply chain management. It currently serves over 8,500 members representing industry, government, and academia from 67 countries.
What were some of the events that led to the formation of the association in 1963? Andraski: In the late '60s and early '70s we had a transportation discipline, a warehousing discipline, and inventory management. Thought leaders said warehousing and transportation should really come together. We called that physical distribution. Over time we began to have control of the product and the ability to work with customers. It wasn't as though somebody came up with a great idea that we need to have this holistic organization.
Gecowets: We really didn't have a profession back then. As I look back on what happened in each decade, we really created a profession as well as built a profession. Most of the people in [CSCMP's] founding group had a marketing background, and as marketing people they happened to be the person who was responsible for the movement and storage. They didn't know what to call it. Even traffic and transportation, which wound up being the big dollar area in logistics, was not well organized back then.
When you look back, it looks like all this was well planned and everything fell into place. It didn't. There was an awful lot of confusion. We didn't know what we didn't know. We didn't know what made a professional association. Fortunately, the executive committees that I have worked with in all the years right from the very beginning were highly professional.
Kallock: My first annual [CSCMP] conference was in 1968 in Chicago. Having come from Procter & Gamble and having joined A.T. Kearney in Chicago, I had no idea how the experiences that I had at P&G would fit into a broader consulting environment, but the people I met at the meeting allowed me to quickly develop a network of people I could trust and work with.
Richards: In many regards you could say I am a product of this organization, because my father was actively involved, and while I was still in school I went to an association meeting. Even when I went to that event, I had no plans to get into this profession. But it was that couple of days' experience that I had tagging along with my dad as a college student that made me decide to get into it.
Did the events of the '80s, such as the deregulation of transportation, change the dynamic of the profession? Richards: It sure did. I was very new to the profession at the time and was working for a third party. My focus was more within the four walls, but what you started to see were people—manufacturers, for example—that were getting very creative with how they dealt with transportation, through things like consolidation. That is really when it started. People were collaborating. We were saying, let's share resources and as a result we would all benefit, including the customer. Again, being new to the profession, I thought this was exciting.
What were some of the visions and aspirations of the early founders? Gecowets: We wanted early on to get to know each other. Then later on we wanted others in the corporation to get to know us. ... Incidentally, the founders were primarily interested in transportation, and I don't think we even met a warehouseman until we were in it about two years. Then, strangely, the warehousemen came in and provided the strong leadership of the organization very early on. Then we added the other functions. I think from the '70s to the '80s we started bringing in our peers from the marketing department. ... So we started in the '80s to work with our counterparts throughout the corporation.
When did we first start seeing job titles with the word "logistics" in them becoming more common? Gecowets: I think we caused that. When we changed the name [from the National Council of Physical Distribution Management to the Council of Logistics Management in 1985] and moved from distribution to logistics, the demand for coalescence was there.
Kallock: The word "logistics" first started to appear on motor carriers' trailers. The company's name was "So and So Logistics Company." It was a military term at that point.
Gecowets: At first, "distribution" was more appropriate for what we were really doing, and logistics seemed kind of like a foreign word. I knew what it meant but I didn't know whether we could get others to know what it meant. It caught on so much faster than I thought.
Kallock: The hallmark of the organization was deeper than worrying about what it was called or what the title was. It had progressed through the '80s to become an amalgamation of individuals who respected each other and who were creative enough to try new technologies that were rapidly becoming available, and to put that in the context of what they as practitioners saw to be the challenges, not of today but of tomorrow.
For example, take distribution planning. Models were static. They assumed everything happened at a point in time versus the dynamic processing of orders and the real-time interaction between consumers or customers and the supplier. [Because it gave us] that opportunity to coalesce around what the needs of tomorrow were going to be in supply chain management, respect for then-CLM [Council of Logistics Management] as being a safe haven for sharing ideas across the supply chain and across industry grew pretty rapidly.
Andraski: We also have to recognize that senior management began to invite the logistics people, the supply chain people to talk with customers. It was important to have that representation so that when the customer was talking about service requirements and service failures, you had someone there who had the [relevant] knowledge and the understanding.
Richards: That has been one of the keys to the [success of the] organization. This organization helped to elevate the profession through research and through education, so that the C-level did say, "Wow, we need to have these folks involved." So again, it is the organization not being a lobby but being an influencer. There is a big difference.
Kallock: Going back to my experience at Procter & Gamble, we were moving from an organization that was focused on getting shipments out the door, to an organization that was dedicated to the education of people who thought the customer's point of view relative to how well the company was performing was very important. We moved from the supply side to the demand side, and then we put energy around carrying that message from the customer's perspective, from the consumer or the customer supplying the consumer back through the supply chain. And that is that way I look at it today.
The U.S., U.K., and Australia will strengthen supply chain resiliency by sharing data and taking joint actions under the terms of a pact signed last week, the three nations said.
The agreement creates a “Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group” designed to build resilience in priority supply chains and to enhance the members’ mutual ability to identify and address risks, threats, and disruptions, according to the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade.
One of the top priorities for the new group is developing an early warning pilot focused on the telecommunications supply chain, which is essential for the three countries’ global, digitized economies, they said. By identifying and monitoring disruption risks to the telecommunications supply chain, this pilot will enhance all three countries’ knowledge of relevant vulnerabilities, criticality, and residual risks. It will also develop procedures for sharing this information and responding cooperatively to disruptions.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the group chose that sector because telecommunications infrastructure is vital to the distribution of public safety information, emergency services, and the day to day lives of many citizens. For example, undersea fiberoptic cables carry over 95% of transoceanic data traffic without which smartphones, financial networks, and communications systems would cease to function reliably.
“The resilience of our critical supply chains is a homeland security and economic security imperative,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a release. “Collaboration with international partners allows us to anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they occur. Our new U.S.-U.K.-Australia Supply Chain Resilience Cooperation Group will help ensure that our communities continue to have the essential goods and services they need, when they need them.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help users build “smart and responsive supply chains” by increasing workforce productivity, expanding visibility, accelerating processes, and prioritizing the next best action to drive results, according to business software vendor Oracle.
To help reach that goal, the Texas company last week released software upgrades including user experience (UX) enhancements to its Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM) suite.
“Organizations are under pressure to create efficient and resilient supply chains that can quickly adapt to economic conditions, control costs, and protect margins,” Chris Leone, executive vice president, Applications Development, Oracle, said in a release. “The latest enhancements to Oracle Cloud SCM help customers create a smarter, more responsive supply chain by enabling them to optimize planning and execution and improve the speed and accuracy of processes.”
According to Oracle, specific upgrades feature changes to its:
Production Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations improve manufacturing performance by providing real-time insight into work orders and generative AI-powered shift reporting.
Maintenance Supervisor Workbench, which helps organizations increase productivity and reduce asset downtime by resolving maintenance issues faster.
Order Management Enhancements, which help organizations increase operational performance by enabling users to quickly create and find orders, take actions, and engage customers.
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Enhancements, which help organizations accelerate product development and go-to-market by enabling users to quickly find items and configure critical objects and navigation paths to meet business-critical priorities.
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.
Businesses were preparing to deal with the effects of the latest major storm of the 2024 hurricane season as Francine barreled toward the Gulf Coast Wednesday.
Louisiana was experiencing heavy rain and wind gusts at midday as the storm moved northeast through the Gulf and was expected to pick up speed. The state will bear the brunt of Francine’s wind, rain, and storm damage, according to forecasters at weather service provider AccuWeather.
“AccuWeather meteorologists are projecting a storm surge of 6-10 feet along much of the Louisiana coast with a pocket of 10-15 feet on some of the inland bays in south-central Louisiana,” the company reported in an afternoon update Wednesday.
Businesses and supply chains were prepping for delays and disruptions from the storm earlier this week. Supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc said the storm will have a “significant impact” on a wide range of industries along the Gulf Coast, including aerospace, life sciences, manufacturing, oil and gas, and high-tech, among others. In a statement, Resilinc said energy companies had evacuated personnel and suspended operations on oil platforms as of Tuesday. In addition, the firm said its proprietary data showed the storm could affect nearly 11,000 manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, fabrication, and testing sites across the region, putting at risk more than 57,000 parts used in everyday items and the manufacture of more than 4,000 products.
Francine, which was expected to make landfall as a category 2 hurricane, according to AccuWeather, follows the devastating effects of two storms earlier this summer: Hurricane Beryl, which hit the Texas coast in July, and Hurricane Debby, which caused $28 billion in damage and economic loss after hitting the Southeast on August 5.
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Supply chain managers at consumer goods manufacturing companies are tasked with meeting mandates from large retailers to implement item-level RFID.
Supply chain managers at consumer goods manufacturing companies are tasked with meeting mandates from large retailers to implement item-level RFID. Initially these requirements applied primarily to apparel manufacturers and brands. Now, realizing the fruits of this first RFID wave, retailers are turning to suppliers to tag more merchandise.
This is one more priority for supply chain leaders, who suddenly have RFID added to their to-do list. How to integrate tagging into automated production lines? How to ensure each tag functions properly after goods are packed, shipped, and shelved? Where to position the RFID tag on the product? All are important questions to be answered in order to implement item-level RFID. The clock is ticking on retail mandates.
Different products, new RFID considerations
Hangtags, the primary form of apparel product identification, present a relatively easy way to attach an RFID tag. Pressure-sensitive labels likewise can carry an RFID inlay. The inlay, consisting of a microchip and antenna, holds the product’s unique identifying information. This tiny device is activated when the RFID reader passes by it. For nonapparel products, in many cases, there is no way to attach a hangtag. Therefore, a pressure-sensitive RFID label often must be put directly on the product. If the product is packaged in a box, the RFID carrier can be attached to or placed inside the box. Either way involves the use of just the right solutions, including the adhesive, shape, dimension, and placement. Moreover, there must be an efficient way to attach the labels to products. This requires process engineering and sometimes capital investment to integrate RFID labeling into highly automated manufacturing lines.
Metals, liquids, and low-surface-energy (LSE) materials pose hurdles for RFID item tagging. Tag and label inlays cannot be read properly through metals and liquids, and the pressure-sensitive labels do not always stick well to product surfaces containing silicone, vinyl, polyethylene, and polystyrene. Very small items are also difficult to tag. Metal paint cans, caulk or paste tubes, lipsticks, and reusable water bottles are just a few products that present RFID tagging challenges.
In other cases, it is not so much the product itself that hinders readability but rather the shipping method. For example, it is relatively straightforward to apply an RFID tag or label to a bag of fertilizer. But the fertilizer bags might be stacked 60 deep on a pallet. The pressure is too much. It damages the inlay, killing the tag’s readability. So, RFID tags, which were perfectly fine coming off the production line, are now dead from the stacking pressure.
Solutions and testing
RFID tagging and labeling programs take time to get right. While some manufacturers can set up a successful process in a few weeks or months, for others it can take six months, nine months, a year or longer. Variables influencing implementation time include capital equipment investments, the product types (for example, are the materials, shapes, or surfaces potentially problematic?), label supplier capacity and capabilities, and third-party testing rounds.
The good news is that best practices are being refined every day to incorporate RFID on difficult-to-tag products. A case in point is finding answers to RFID-inlay readability issues on metal or liquid products. There are ways to attach an RFID label to the product’s lid or cap.
The University of Auburn RFID Lab is the de facto U.S. authority on all things retail RFID. Through its ARC program, the lab works with end users to make sure RFID tags meet or exceed their required performance and quality levels. Walmart, for example, requires its suppliers to source from Auburn RFID Lab’s ARC program-approved inlay companies. “ARC is a test system and database that stores comprehensive performance data of in-development and market available RFID tags,” according to the lab’s website. “ARC has been working with end users to translate RFID use cases into specific levels of performance in the ARC test environment.”
High-quality RFID tags and labels are at the heart of it all. The following are some considerations to keep in mind when choosing an RFID tag and label provider:
What are their quality control and testing capabilities? Can they confirm that every tag is readable? Do they have software to verify that UPC and RFID information match up? Do they possess familiarity with Auburn’s RFID Lab approval process?
What is their capacity? How many thousands or millions of inlays do they create per day? Are there minimum order quantities?
What are their order management and shipping processes like? What is their delivery speed? How easy are they to order from? Where are their print facilities located?
Do they offer customization? Do they possess specialized equipment? Can they die cut irregular shapes, including very small dimensions? Do they possess adhesive expertise and application equipment? Do they have solutions for metal, liquid, and other difficult-to-tag items? Are they able to configure label rolls to work on automatic label dispensers?
It takes trial and error to implement RFID item tagging for nonapparel products. Effective, compliant programs do not manifest overnight. Collaboration with experienced label providers and the Auburn RFID Lab will help manufacturers overcome even the most complex RFID tagging challenges. There will be a roadmap to success, and the results in the form of better inventory visibility, swifter sell-through, and stronger sales will be well worth it.