Tag Archives: innovation

Cathay Pacific strips seats from 777 aircraft for cargo

Posted on August 11, 2020 by | 2 comments

I am fascinated by this article. What an innovative solution!

Many years ago my family and I took a trip to Guatemala. One of the highlights of my trip was going to see the Maya ruins at Tikal, which is in the jungle in the central Peten area far east of Guatemala City. There aren’t any roads to get there, so you had to fly.

We got on our plane (a DC-3) at the Guatemala City airport. All seats were occupied with passengers going to the jungle area. The flight was one of those hedgehoppers, only a couple of thousand feet above the ground, right above the trees. We made several stops.

Finally we arrived at the town of Flores, on the shores of Lake Peten Itza. The stewardess (that is what they were, then!) informed us that the stop would be for a while, and we were allowed out on the tarmac in the steaming heat to wait while they refueled the plane.

As we watched, a group of men went into the plane. We wondered what they were doing. In a few minutes they started emerging, each one carrying a plane seat. This went on for a half hour, as many seats in the plane were removed and stacked on the tarmac.

Eric Kulisch Monday, August 10, 2020

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DCSA unveils new era of smarter supply chains with track & trace standards

The Digital Container Shipping Association has unveiled its new T&T standard for tracking containers while en route between shipper and consignee.  They are quite detailed and have been planned using some of the latest design thinking techniques, including the definition of personas who might use the system one way or another. They’ve prepared some very nice slide shows to describe at a high level what they are doing.

DCSA was launched by MSC, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and ONE last April, with CMA CGM, Yang Ming, Evergreen, HMM and Zim joining a month later. This is a fairly quick turnaround for a first standard delivery.

The catch will be how fast people start sticking to them when building equipment and systems. Doing so can be predicted to help sales, via a network effect– since the standards make systems compatible, there’s less hassle making one system relate to another.  A close review should be done of the standards, to see how many choices individual participants are given to make the information specific to their needs.  Such choices tend to produce systems that lose their compatibility if one of the partners changes, and make specific programming necessary when others try to adapt to the system. It’s the anthesis of cooperation.  And these standards are meant to promote cooperation rather than competition.

An example of the issue can be seen with EDI, in which general record structures are defined, but a lot of latitude is given to provide extra information or different information. The result is that EDI needs to be specially programmed for each pair-wise interaction of companies, a problem that has haunted us for 20 years even though
EDI, in general, was a big step forward.

Let’s hope that we all have learned from the past, and can use the standard to really lubricate information flow in supply chains.

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By via New era of smarter supply chains as DCSA track & trace standards are unveiled – The Loadstar

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Posted on January 28, 2020 by in Advanced Computing, Logistics, Production Operations, Shipping, Strategy, Supply Chains, Uncategorized

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Maersk invest in ZigZag Returns

It’s clear that Maersk is making bets as a venture capitalist on young firms with unique value propositions. They have made an investment, via Maersk Growth, in ZigZag, a London-based firm.

I had never heard of ZigZag before.  They offer a SaaS (Software as a service) that allows manufacturers and retailers to manage returns in a one-stop manner.  Their services include hard logistics assets like access to warehouses and sortation centers and access to carriers, as well as just the software.

The story indicates some of what they do.  We all know that returns are a unique type of operation, whose nature differs with the type of industry.  HP has been doing it for many years in the printer division.  But I was interested to find out that there is a lot of interest among clothing manufacturers or retailers.

Apparently people buy clothes, use them for a while, and then return them, even for no refund.  There is also a temptation for retailers to get rid of stale inventory by simply throwing it in a landfill, a sustainability issue.  Easy returns offers an opportunity for a firm that can handle these problems efficiently and in a sustainable manner. (I presume there might be an incentive to cheat; but certainly a specialist could do a better job because it’s their core business).

I doubt that ZigZag will be merged with Maersk.  However, the bet makes sense when you understand that a lot of what Maersk carries is clothing manufactures from the Far East.  If ZigZag can help these clients it could make a difference in the clients’ bottom line, and Maersk would be able to say they helped with the supply chain problems.

Reach ZigZag here: https://www.zigzag.global/

screenshot-Zigzag 2019-11-06

via Maersk invest in ZigZag Returns – Press Release

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Posted on November 6, 2019 by in entrepreneurship, Investing, Logistics, Production Operations, Service Management, Strategy, Supply Chains, Sustainability

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