Yadda yadda. There’s some nonsense being written about the impact of Amazon on supply chains. Actually they’ve already had it, and stand the chance of doing even more.
They have set the standard for consumer product delivery with Amazon Prime, which everyone now has to meet or beat. And they have a chance to set the standard for 1-day delivery as well. Owning a standard is an advantage hard to overcome. UPS and Fedex did the same years ago with package delivery, but they are not part of the order cycle as well, and that’s why Amazon is ahead.
Think of the area: drone delivery, omnichannel, information access, transparency of service options, food delivery, data centers for cloud computing (AWS) — Amazon has been a disruptive leader in all of them. Standard 3PLS and forwarders better get their act in gear.
I don’t think it will be that long before a mark is made, whether they buy assets or not. Even the threat will disrupt things in Logistics.
I’m reminded of the SC24/7 quote yesterday from Yogi Berra, “Logistics is 90% software, and the other half is labor.” Amazon is leading there also.
Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Tom Racciatti, a director in West Monroe’s Operations Excellence practice, to get some fresh perspective on Amazon’s supply chain.
Supply Chain and Logistics 