State of the Logistics Union 2017

Dan Gilmore’s take on the latest report from CSCMP on the state of logistics.  A copy would be good reading, but you have to be a CSCMP member to get it free.

One interesting chart is this one showing innovations.  It’s a classic innovation grid showing estimated impact vertically, and when it’s likely to be mainstream horizontally. The authors think co-opetition in supply chains, a high-impact innovation, is going to be mainstream in a couple of years. While I agree it has high impact potential, I think it’s a lot farther off than that.  Especially in the US, we seem to be reverting to an unregulated world where markets rule, and this makes it very hard to hold cooperative schemes together.  Similarly, Brexit blows apart many attempts at cooperation cross-border, and as nations start trying to foist their local problems off on others we’ll see natural reactions.

Supply Chain Digest LogoLogistics Costs as Percent of GDP Down Again in 2016, Falling in Relative and Absolute Terms

Source: State of the Logistics Union 2017

 

Truckers Work Alongside the Coders Trying to ‘Eliminate’ Their Jobs

The headline is a gross misstatement of what this innovative startup is trying.  They want to write software that makes existing trucks, perhaps with a few sensors added, able to self-drive on the freeways.  A trucker will be in the cab at all times.  This approach is much more likely to be practical soon; there’s almost no chance that drivers will be eliminated from the cabs of vehicles soon. Politicians and insurance companies won’t have it, nor will the trucking companies themselves; the liability issues are way too daunting.

BloombergAt the autonomous driving startup Starsky Robotics, the present and future of U.S. employment ride in the same cab.

Source: These Truckers Work Alongside the Coders Trying to Eliminate Their Jobs – Bloomberg

You may need to log in to see the story. There’s a link to a great podcast in it, an interview with the leader of this company.

https://soundcloud.com/bloomberg-business/human-vs-machine-self-driving-trucks

Innovation in the self-driving space is definitely to evolve into a standard set that we all will be able to use; the more tries the better, at this stage, to explore the realms of the possible.

 

Why Amazon is buying Whole Foods

A great article by DEREK THOMPSON

It is right on target about the reasons– they are supply chain reasons.  Amazon covets the urban locations to speed up deliveries; but it would be fantastically complex to procure and engineer these one at a time.  With the Whole Foods locations, they now have drop-off points for overnight delivery, and mini-warehouses for food items, especially those that need ‘fresh’ or ‘frozen’ treatment. $14 billion is cheap in terms of accessibility to a population, say within a circle of a given radius.

Perhaps we should rate warehouses and depots by a distribution of the number of customers in a unit of area.

  The retailer’s $14 billion bet isn’t just about the future of food. It’s about becoming the one-stop shop for your entire life.

Source: Why Amazon Bought Whole Foods – The Atlantic