Category Archives: Logistics

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Gartner: Supply chain blockchain pilots stalling because of technology immaturity | Supply Chain Dive

  has summarized Gartner’s survey in this article, which seems to indicate more clearly that blockchain is a solution chasing problems.  The basic problems are “technology immaturity”, “lack of standards”, ‘too ambitious scope”, and a misunderstanding of the use cases.    I think Gartner has made a fair assessment of the situation, if perhaps even a bit too enthusiastic!  So much hype over blockchain, and so much development investment, forces companies to take a look at a technology that basically duplicates what many systems already do.  In short, the use case doesn’t hold up.
We need trust between partners in our supply chains.  Supply chains are all about cooperation, and current systems have nearly the same capacity for verification that blockchain based systems do. What current systems lack is an easy way to provide access for partners, and to control it.  So the trustless paradigm is not immediately relevant.  It might be in some of the commodity tracking uses Gartner details, though how it would prevent blatant fraud is not clear.
Gartner is also right about the impending balkanization of blockchain systems.  Each one is its own chain, but logistics partnerships are shifting constantly.  What’s needed is connections between blockchains so data can be translated between them readily.  Gartner refers to them as APIs;  in the old days, we called them middleware.  It would be great, as one survey participant indicated, to have a replacement for a peer-to-peer system (EDI) which allows many to many communication without the hassle, but that is not what blockchain proponents are suggesting.
Finally, the lack of standards is a major problem for supply chains.  Supply chains are about cooperation, and cooperation requires agreement on standards.  My partner Chris Clott and I have written about the need in the maritime supply chain world, and there’s more coming.  In fact, several groups have started up intending to create standards.  (See the BCG article below.)   Experience shows that standards take a while (read l..oo…oo..ng time) to become accepted.  And there’s substantial evidence that standard setting in a top-down fashion is more likely to fail and less likely to get a good ecosystem of cooperating providers than evolution from the bottom up based on specific solutions to particular use cases.  (See article by Hanseth etal below).
From this viewpoint, it’s actually good that there has not been too much success yet, and that there are still lots of entrepreneurial attempts at creating useful solutions to specific logistics and supply chain problems.  Whether these can use blockchain or some other database technology is uncertain, but the effort is going to yield some progress, though over a longer time frame than we expect.  I’m thinking more in the time frame of ERP’s rise as a must-have system, maybe 20 years.

screenshot-www.supplychaindive.com 2018-01-29 09-45-53-153 via Gartner: Supply chain blockchain pilots stalling because of technology immaturity | Supply Chain Dive

Here’s a link to the actual Gartner report PDF .

Here’s a link to the BCG report PDF.

Here’s a link to the Hanseth etal paper, about standardization projects in Norwegian health care.

 

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Posted on May 9, 2019 by in Advanced Computing, Logistics, Supply Chains

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JB Hunt offering new drop-and-hook service

JB Hunt is a powerhouse in managed logistics. Offering a drop and hook service seems like a reasonable thing to do.  Many firms have yard space to keep a spare trailer, and it allows them to load it on their own time instead of waiting for the truck to show up.

In my experience int he telecom equipment business, this was a big deal. We were always loading up to midnight, but sometimes had to wait for drivers to arrive. Or the drivers had to set aside the time to appear so the trailer could be loaded, and wait in a queue.  It would have changed our whole production system to be able to load the trailers, even a few, in advance.   In fact, we could have loaded a couple trailers with generic equipment that could be customized on site in case there were last minute orders; we were always looking to grab as many orders before quarter close that we could.

Having warehouse workers work at odd hours for truck arrivals is difficult for operators.  And drivers would appreciate the convenience as well.

Shortly in the future, paperwork will be able to be handled electronically as well, son the driver would just need to grab and go.  The right clients will make this work well.

Hunt has an astute management team and is a frequent adopter of new ideas in logistics.

screenshot-www.supplychaindive.com 2018-01-29 09-45-53-153

via JB Hunt announces new drop-and-hook service with 500 trailers | Supply Chain Dive

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Posted on May 7, 2019 by in Logistics, Supply Chains, Trucking

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Globalization in transition

This is a fascinating report about global trade, with many interesting statistics, and with points of view not often presented so cogently.

Authors Susan Lund, James Manyika, Jonathan Woetzel, Jacques Bughin, Mekala Krishnan, Jeongmin Seong, and Mac Muir point out that global trade in services already probably exceeds that for goods. If a fair value is placed on it, we would see the US trade deficit, for example,wiped out and replaced by a larger surplus.  They also point out that labor is a declining factor both in the value of production, and in labor cost’s ability to determine where products get made.  The intellectual property value is much higher, and often moves in reverse fashion to the goods. But it is hard to price into conventional labor statistics.

I can’t wait to read the whole document!

mckinsey-logo1  via Globalization in transition: The future of trade and global value chains | McKinsey  

Here is the full document link.

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Posted on February 9, 2019 by in Logistics, Ports, Production Operations, Strategy, Supply Chains

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