After a huge peak in 2020, online retail’s share of total retail sales seems to have stagnated at around 13-15% in the major European countries and the USA. It is a similar picture for online groceries, with an even slightly lower share and little to no growth. Many of the online grocery services that saw the light of day in recent years are struggling. Instant delivery companies have all but disappeared now that the last man standing, Getir, is experiencing financial woes. The mega deal between British grocery delivery company Ocado and US-based Kroger to build dozens of distribution centres ..read more

“Who’s going to pay for decarbonizing the supply chain?” was the title of a recent article on a supply chain website written by an experienced US journalist (and how very American of him to immediately zoom in on who would bear the costs!). According to the journalist, 75% of all emissions fall under Scope 3, i.e. are caused beyond the company itself. Meanwhile, according to an estimate by consulting firm McKinsey, the global economy’s transition to ‘net zero’ emissions will annually cost an additional $3.5 trillion, equivalent to half the profits of all multinationals worldwide. Needless to s ..read more

Does it resemble hip-hop? Jazz? A cha-cha? The slide? No one knows, but in my discussions, business leaders agree that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here, and the projected impact on supply chain technology looms large sending the industry into very different gyrations. How fast will it transform work, no one knows, but excitement reigns. By Lora Cecere Traditionally, supply chain technology providers evolve slowly, and business leaders move at an even-slower pace (glacier speed) to revise work practices. For me, it is like watching paint drying in the winter. Can we supercharge this? I thin ..read more

Many companies around the world are currently in the midst of a strategic repositioning. The choices they make will determine whether they survive the coming decade of innovations, uncertainties and changes, or will be obliterated or acquired by competitors. The once-mighty conglomerate General Electric, built up by industrial icon Jack Welch, is being subdivided into three distinct companies, for example, because the various corporate structures, business models and supply chains have become so complex that there is no longer any synergy to be gained. Similarly, Japanese electronics group Tos ..read more

According to economists at banking giant Goldman Sachs, ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots will put 300 million jobs at risk worldwide. 18% of all full-time jobs could end up being automated – and in particular the administrative tasks of white-collar professionals. Blue-collar workers in hands-on roles at distribution centres and elsewhere are less at risk of losing their jobs due to automation. I recently visited FedEx’s newly enhanced international distribution centre (DC) in the Dutch town of Duiven. I was curious about the level of automation at this DC since the reop ..read more

Many supply chain executives have been able to prove their worth since the early 2020s, during disruptions including factory shutdowns in China, the obstruction of the Suez Canal, the shift to online shopping (and back again), and the shift from hospitality to supermarkets (and back again). And last year, all the chaos was compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions. Given the enormous geopolitical and public health-related disruptions over the past three years, it is an amazing feat that the vast majority of store shelves remained filled for virtually the entire period ..read more

The Dutch province of North Brabant recently decided to temporarily suspend the construction of new large-scale distribution centres in most of its locations, and dozens of counties have imposed similar moratoriums in the USA. In the case of urban distribution, research increasingly shows that vans and other delivery vehicles spend the majority of their time standing still. Meanwhile, the space needed to store containers in and around ports is increasing faster than containers can be processed. In today’s lengthy supply chains, goods are increasingly stationary rather than in motion. Inventori ..read more

We’re not living in an era of change, but in a change of era. This has been the firmly held belief of Jan Rotmans, Professor of Transition Studies and Sustainability at Erasmus University Rotterdam, for years. I am currently halfway through his most recent book called ‘Embrace the Chaos’ about this inevitable transition.  I was reminded of his comments about a change of era as I listened to an interesting presentation by Anton van Beek, a board member of the multinational Dow Chemical Company, at a recent sustainability conference. He believes that chemical companies must rapidly make tod ..read more

Does investing in tech start-ups have a future right now? Alarm bells are ringing in the US financial media following a 25% drop in investment in Silicon Valley to US$7.2 billion in the last quarter of 2022, putting it back at the same level as in ‘Covid year’ 2020. Seed funding for start-ups has declined in Europe over the past six months too, albeit less dramatically than in the USA. These decreases are quite understandable, since the rise in interest rates since the start of the war in Ukraine has brought an end to cheap borrowing. Nowadays, investments need to provide a clear prospect of r ..read more

In the space of one week, Amazon and Microsoft announced layoffs affecting 20,000 people. This sent shockwaves in Seattle, a city that has been living in a tech bubble for the past decade or so. The ‘tech-cession’ has been rumbling on for a few months now. Although it initially affected smaller tech start-ups, it seems that even tech hyperscales like Amazon and Microsoft can no longer escape this significant shakeout. As supply chain managers, we know that operations make an invaluable contribution to a company’s success. But even among the many tech start-ups in supply chain and logistics, a ..read more