Just when I thought I’d heard and seen everything, I learned something new.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking to commercial aerospace and defense contractors like Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed Martin about how they’re applying RFID technologies, especially in their maintenance, repair and overhaul operations.

At Modern, we write often about RFID in the retail supply chain or in automotive assembly lines. But some of the most innovative ...Read More

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What’s the most critical issue facing the materials handling industry today?

By my way of thinking, it’s not $100+ per gallon oil. No, I think it’s the changing demographics of the country’s workforce. Many industries are talking about the worker shortage they’re going to face over the next few years. The financial planning industry, for instance, estimates it’ll be short 50,000 planners in the coming years to deal with the needs of retiring baby boomers; the accounting industry is predicting similar shortages in its profession.

Talk to people in our industry and the impact is already being felt. At NA 200...Read More

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RFID in the retail space has been quiet for the last few years. But since Sam’s Club announced its plans for RFID, there is renewed energy and interest among suppliers who will have to meet the new requirements.

There are at least two key differences this time around, compared to the Wal-Mart RFID requirement of a few year’s ago, says Bill Bulzoni, Zebra Technologies director of Global Business Development.

First, Sam’s Club’s plans include a move to item-level tagging in relatively short order. “Wal-Mart wanted to tag at the case and pallet level, so suppliers could make that ...Read More

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Almost everywhere you turn, the economic news is grim. But when the going gets tough, the best companies often look for ways to improve their operations to save money today, and position themselves to take market share when things rebound.

With that in mind, I asked three supply chain analysts for the kinds of projects they think can deliver an ROI and competitive advantage in a tough economy: Steve Banker, service director, supply chain management for ARC Advisory Group; Greg Aimi, director of supply chain research, for AMR Research; and Ian Hobkirk, senior analyst, supply chain execution, Aberdeen Group.

Look at the ROI

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How many engineers does it take to design a better unit load?

Eight.

That’s how many students are currently earning degrees in a systems-based approach to unit load design at Virginia Tech’s Center for Unit Load Design.

“It’s not many,” says Marshall White, Ph.D., a professor emeritus and former director of the center who created the program. “But it’s a start.”

When they ...Read More

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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Or, so the saying goes.

Dr. Marshall White would like to build a better unit load. With luck, the world, or at least a few guys from places like Bentonville and Cincinnati, will beat a path to his door. 

As the former director of the Pallet & Container Lab and the Center for Unit Load Design at Virginia Tech, White spent years researching how to build a better wooden pallet. Today, he is president of a consulting firm, White and Co., focused on w...Read More

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Let’s be honest: materials handling suffers from an inferiority complex. Far too many people think that most of us spend our time moving boxes or running lift trucks into pallet racks.

I discovered this years ago when I worked in a family-owned industrial packaging business. Just calling it an industrial packaging business was a way of elevating the fact that our bread and butter came from selling wooden pallets, the most basic materials handling product on the planet. I still remember the afternoon about 25 years ago when I asked a purchasing agent I’d called on about a dozen times what it was going to take to bid on his business. “I buy $2 million worth of chemicals a year,” the guy said. “Do you think I have time to mess around with some pal...Read More

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In a couple of weeks, I’ll head to Cleveland for NA 2008. I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of visiting the show.

You see, at heart, I’m a materials handling guy. I enjoy walking the floor and seeing conveyors, AGVs, lift trucks and palletizers in action. But what I really love is seeing the simple but innovative products that often lead to unexpected productivity i...Read More

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ERP or best-of-breed?

In the supply chain execution world, them are fightin’ words.

The IT department would love everyone in the corporation to be singing Kumbaya from a digital hymnal, with financials, sales, manufacturing, distribution and transportation all working on the same ERP platform. Who, after all, really needs real-time slotting to move boxes?

To the operations guys and gals who run manufacturing plants, distribution centers and transportation departments this is heresy. They could care le...Read More

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I seem to be writing a lot these days about the green supply chain.

It’s not that I’m a one-note guy. It’s just that in the supply chain, green is where the action is these days.

In the last two months, companies as diverse as LLamasoft, JDA Software, Wal-Mart and IBM have touted the...Read More

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The other day, I talked about China with Sanjeev Nagrath, the global leader of supply chain management for IBM Global Business Services. The ostensible purpose behind the call was Big Blue’s recently-opened supply chain research center in Beijing.

The point behind the new facility, Nagrath told me, is to help companies “transform and extend their supply chains in a globally integrated economy.” IBM chose Beijing for obvious reasons: You can’t be in business today without a China strategy. “Whe...Read More

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When it comes to U.S. manufacturing, much of the news is negative. Who hasn’t heard stories about displaced workers, plant closings and global outsourcing. You may even work for a company in the middle of a manufacturing transformation.

Massachusetts is no different than any other state. It has certainly lost manufacturing jobs and entire industries. At the same time, I recently interviewed Jack Healy and Ted Bauer, two experts on the state of manufacturing in Massachusetts. They suggested a different way to think about what’s happening in their state that may give other regions of the country – or companies like yours – a different way of thinking about competiti...Read More

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