Category Archives: Supply Chains

How Much Did Carrier Alliances Really Contribute to NY-NJ Port Congestion?

Posted on October 30, 2015 by | Leave a comment

This is an older (May 2015) article about the congestion situation at the port of New York/New Jersey and its relation to container shipping alliances.  It’s still true by and large. It is based on a Journal Of Commerce (JOC) article.  Chassis are still to blame in large part at these ports.  I’m sure there’s more to it if you’re inside.  But the point is clear.

Ports and Terminal operators need to address these downstream issues that affect how reliably cargo gets to end customers, and so do the ocean carriers.

Penn Lease Logo

 

 

You might be disappointed to hear that port congestion probably won’t ease as much as you expected despite the agreement between the IWU and the PMA.

Source: If NY-NJ Port Congestion Persists: How Much Did Carrier Alliances Really Contribute? – Penn Intermodal Leasing, Inc

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Posted in Logistics, Ports, Production Operations, Shipping, Supply Chains, Trucking

Conflicts That Cause Companies to Stockpile SKUs

Posted on October 30, 2015 by | Leave a comment

I am posting this article mostly for my students.  It’s about inventory, folks!

Source: Conflicts That Cause Companies to Stockpile SKUs

How you group items makes a big difference in how you set service levels (fill rates or safety stock levels) in the face of variable demand.  When you have so many SKUs in stock, you have to group them or there’s too fragmented data to get good forecasts.  But how you do that grouping is important for the accuracy of forecasts and order quantities and timing.  And the researchers (graduate students, probably only a few years older than you) found that employees tended over time to misclassify SKUs in the groups, causing errors to creep in.

So the issue is the classic operations management or supply chain management dilemma. We know what to do.  Why aren’t we doing it?  At the end the subject is not about figuring the numbers, it’s about convincing people to do what they ought to.

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Posted in Leadership, Logistics, Production Operations, Supply Chains

2015 I-NUF Conference

Posted on October 25, 2015 by | Leave a comment

I spent an enjoyable three days at this conference on Urban Freight held in Long Beach, CA.

Source: 2015 I-NUF Overview | METRANS Transportation Center

My colleague Dr Chris Clott (SUNY Maritime) and I presented a paper on supply chain integration at the Chicago freight bottleneck.  Our discussion offered a method of discovering main supply chain corridors to and from the area, discussed some of the attempts to reduce congestion in the light of supply chain integration, and concluded that ports such as LA/Long Beach or New York may need to consider implementing long range corridor integration rather than focusing on improvements inside their region boundaries.

We’ve included some Pareto charts exemplifying our search for important corridors linking Chicago. Truck traffic is super-dominant in terms of dollar value over every other mode.  So why isn’t supply chain integration in the Chicago mega region looking hard at alleviating truck congestion?

Pareto ToCHI Domestic Multi Pareto ToCHI Domestic Rail Pareto ToCHI Domestic Truck

 

 

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Posted in Logistics, Ports, Strategy, Supply Chains