Women account for 37% of students enrolled in university supply chain courses, but only 5% of top-level supply chain positions at Fortune 500 companies are filled by women, according to SCM World. In comparison, women hold 15% of all executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies.

Getting more women in supply chain management is a major part of getting more women into corporate leadership as supply chain and logistics get more and more interest the C-suite.

Over recent months, members of the International Foodservice Distributors Association (IFDA) have been sharing ways to build a supply of good candidates through a series of articles from the Association. 

They've also discussed creative training programs to help candidates succeed. Here are some takeaways.

When Ocean Spray opened a new distribution center in Lakeland, Florida in 2011, the facility’s proximity to a rail yard used by a competitor created a behind-the-scenes opportunity to work together.

Ocean Spray wanted a cheaper and more efficient way to ship its products from a New Jersey facility to Lakeland, while rival juice company Tropicana was paying to send empty rail cars south on a "back haul" from New Jersey to Florida. 

Working with an existing logistics partner named Wheels Clipper, over the course of a year Ocean Spray shifted 80% of its shipping along the New Jersey–Florida route off trucks and into Tropicana’s empty rail cars. The change reduced carbon emissions by 20% and slashed transportation costs by 40% – about $200 per load – on that route, according to a 2013 analysis by the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. 

As companies pursue growth in an environment where operations risk is pervasive, and where supply chain risk has become a top priority, a robust risk management capability is key to designing and operating supply chains.   

A recent Accenture study of senior executives found that the majority believe supply chain risk management is important or very important. Their focus on mitigating risks in the supply chain is often driven by concerns tied to cost and other pricing factors, IT security and complexity, and the unpredictable global economy. 

Most companies receive some return on investment from their risk management. However, we identified a small group of companies which generate impressive returns in excess of 100 percent. 

Last year, I was excited to hear about a new start-up in San Francisco that delivered cheap bottles of wine within an hour. It was called Rewinery, and it was fantastic. I ordered a $5 malbec one day and a $10 chardonnay the next, delivered by bike courier for a modest fee. Already, San Francisco was crawling with bikes, inching up the hills, shuttling sushi and groceries and new clothes, all summoned with the tap of a finger. But Rewinery was the first of the delivery start-ups that made me feel the way I felt back in 2000, when I could order a video and a pint of ice cream to my doorstep from Kozmo.com. Rewinery felt too good to be true.

It was. One day, seeking refreshment, I opened the app to find that Rewinery had gone out of business. 

But something is in the air of late, making hindsight blurry. Despite the early demise of Rewinery and the shrunken ambitions of others, such as eBay Now, similar start-ups with names like Caviar, SpoonRocket and DoorDash have raised half a billion dollars in investment in the last year, according to CB Insights, which tracks venture capital. 

India, not US, will be the launch-pad for Amazon's plan to deliver packages using drones, or unmanned aerial  vehicles, according to two people aware of the development. The US-based e-tailer will debut its drone delivery service with trials in Mumbai and Bangalore, cities where it has warehouses, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

 

Last December, Amazon showcased its Prime Air drone to the world with much fanfare. Since then, questions have been raised about the plausibility of such an idea, but the company appears to be keen on making 

headway.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are faced with their supply chains becoming more complex to support the diverse levels of size and needs in new suppliers and customers. 

As this complexity builds, are your teams spending more time entering and managing data rather than focusing on growing your business? It’s now more important than ever to maintain a well integrated, audited and secure system that can be precisely reported on at every level.

A strong supply chain strategy can be an extremely powerful competitive differentiator, allowing organizations to react quickly and precisely to changes in customer and market demands.

U.S. rail traffic for the week ending Aug. 16, 2014 kept its winning streak rolling, the Association of American Railroads said Thursday, Aug. 21.

U.S. freight carload traffic for the week rose 2.8% measured against the comparable week in 2013, AAR said, while U.S. intermodal volume moved up 5.4%. Total combined U.S. weekly rail traffic notched a 4% rise.

 

Nine of 10 of the carload commodity groups AAR tracks on a weekly basis posted increases compared with the same week in 2013, including petroleum and petroleum products up 19.5%, metallic ores and metals , up 11.6%, nonmetallic minerals, up 7.4%, and grain, up 7.1%. Only coal failed to reach the winner's column, down 3.3% for the week.

As the global refrigerated and frozen food supply continues to grow in volume and complexity, companies in this industry are working to improve their supply chains and make food safer for consumers.

 

Overall projected growth rates of imported foods into the United States are 5-15% per year. This growth comes from consumers’ insatiable appetite for diverse food products, as well as the need for lower costs and high productivity. An FDA report, "Pathway to Global Safety and Quality," estimates that between 10-15% of all food consumed in the United States is imported. And, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, imports account for nearly two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables and 80% of seafood eaten domestically. 

MHI has announced the speaker lineup for the 2014 MHI Executive Summit & Annual Conference. MHI has expanded the educational and informational offerings at this event to better serve our members and address important issues facing our industry. The goal is to bring the industry together to collaborate and develop into a living, growing community that shares knowledge and addresses current and future manufacturing and supply chain challenges and opportunities

The content of this year’s event was developed to address innovations that are driving supply chains that were examined in the recently published MHI Annual Industry Report and US Roadmap for Material Handling & Logistics.

One of the questions that supply chain managers ask is if there are solutions that are both simple and efficient, approaches that they could follow in order to manage the business of supply chain operations.

In a previous interview with Gene Long, VP Industries Supply Chain at Chainalytics, EBN got invaluable insight from his expertise in supply chain resilience to help supply chain management avoid and mitigate risk through adopting new tools and forecasting capabilities. (See Resilience in Supply Chain Management: Interview With Gene Long, Jr., Part 1 and Resilience in Supply Chain Management: Interview With Gene Long Jr., Part 2 .) Now, EBN gets back to Gene Long to dig deeper into the benefits of using predictive analytics in supply chain resilience.

The U.S. Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has proposed revising hazardous materials regulations when it comes to return shipments of certain hazardous materials by motor vehicle. 

The proposal is for a definition for "reverse logistics'' for hazardous materials that are intended to be returned to or between a vendor, distributor, manufacturer, or other person for the purpose of returning for credit, product recall, replacement, or similar reason, for instance, from a retail or wholesale outlet.

The terms "3PL" and "broker" are often used interchangeably, but they mean quite different things. George Abernathy, president and chief commercial officer of Transplace, explains the distinction, and offers advice on which entity to employ in various situations.

There are times when the terms "3PL" and "broker" overlap, says Abernathy. Both are intermediaries between the shipper and the carrier. Yet their roles can differ significantly. A broker typically focuses on the execution of an individual shipment, working to meet specific goals for cost and service. The third-party logistics provider should be thinking more strategically, planning earlier in the supply chain for all possible conditions, "so as to have a better opportunity to avoid that spot-market load."

As part of the efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil and transition to a clean energy economy, the Energy Department announced more than $55 million for 31 new projects to accelerate research and development of critical vehicle technologies that will improve fuel efficiency and reduce costs. These new projects are aimed at meeting the goals and objectives of the President’s EV Everywhere Grand Challenge, as well as improvements in other vehicle technologies, such as powertrains, fuel, tires and auxiliary systems.

Launched in 2012, the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge seeks to make the U.S. automotive industry the first to produce plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) that are as affordable and convenient as today’s gasoline-powered vehicles by 2022.

Omnichannel is one of the hottest buzz-words in supply chain today, but how far does the concept reach? You hear a lot about how omnichannel impacts retailers, carriers and even some wholesalers... but its potential to disrupt the manufacturing industry may surprise you.

Manufacturers: if you continue with business as usual, i.e. shipping full pallets of a given item and leaving the complex sourcing and inventory allocation issues to your downstream partners, you do so at your own peril. Today’s customer is everywhere and has a profound impact on the entire supply chain, all the way down to the manufacturing level. As such, consumers have grown to expect an endless aisle of goods that reaches all the way down to you, the manufacturer. 

The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) was established by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. C-TPAT was established to improve supply chain security for private companies. There are over 10,000 participants, which account for 50% of imports into the United States by value.