This is the first of two articles on the investment firm Stifel’s opinion of the top game changers in Logistics. It’s a summary of the report Stifel recently issued.
One of their interesting views is that for all the talk of automation coming, actually in logistics people are seeing shortages of blue collar workers to do the jobs that are needed now. the automation isn’t coming fast enough to help firms with a problem getting labor. Their argument points to autonomous trucks and the world wide driver shortage. Autonomous trucks are coming, but nowhere near fast enough to replace the dozens of folks leaving truck driving now. It won’t bail us out.
Another point they make is that the e-commerce strategy of placing inventory further forward in the supply chain to be closer to customers may come up against a real shortage of places to put it, particularly in urbanized areas. This makes Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods look very good indeed as a strategy.
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Supply Chain and Logistics 