By Art Van Bodegraven and Ken Ackerman

For decades a staple of both editorial and general humor cartoons in America has been a scraggly, bearded, besandaled zealot in shabby robes, bearing a placard or sandwich board sign proclaiming “The End Is Near!”  Usually placed in an urban setting among well-dressed passers-by, the prophet signifying the imminence of End Times was ignored, overlooked, or made sport of to the tune of a well-placed punch line. more....

By Art Van Bodegraven

Debate about what leadership means can rage endlessly, and often does.  Definitions of leadership abound, each with at least a superficial aura of “gee, that makes sense.”  But there’s lots of variance among definitions – and “definitive” examples. more....

By Art Van Bodegraven

All the live-long day, if you would believe the old song.  Not many of us in today’s world of supply chain management actually worked on a railroad, but many of us worked somewhere around trucks.  And, another large population of us worked in warehouses and distribution centers. more....

By Art Van Bodegraven

The art and science of ergonomics haves been with us for quite a while now.  Some – many – actually understand their importance in the health and welfare of working associates, whether clerks, drivers, laborers, or whatever.  We also get it: good ergonomics means good business in supporting productive job performance in any number of environments.
Maybe ergonomics has been overshadowed recently with the PR surrounding the cult of “green,” but it’s still relevant.  So relevant that a new school of consulting is making money by showing employers how to avoid down-the-road medical costs by installing good ergonomic equipment and practices. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven and Ken Ackerman

The art and science of ergonomics haves been with us for quite a while now.  Some – many – actually understand their importance in the health and welfare of working associates, whether clerks, drivers, laborers, or whatever.  We also get it: good ergonomics means good business in supporting productive job performance in any number of environments.
Maybe ergonomics has been overshadowed recently with the PR surrounding the cult of “green,” but it’s still relevant.  So relevant that a new school of consulting is making money by showing employers how to avoid down-the-road medical costs by installing good ergonomic equipment and practices. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

Several aeons ago, when Traffic Managers were just beginning to rise up out of the primordial ooze with thoughts of morphing into Logisticians, or worse, Supply Chain Managers, an epidemic of Just-In-Time swept across the planet.
Made possible only by the plentiful availability of inexpensive fuel, JIT was a compelling concept.  Knees jerked, nearly in unison, and even people who had no idea what JIT was claimed to be doing it. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

Time was that diversity in our world meant that a person of the feminine persuasion had snagged a job customarily performed by males.  In sensitive and progressive organizations, the ramifications of the event were that we had to stop telling jokes about traveling salesmen and farmers’ daughters.
But our world has changed – a lot.  It is no longer populated by hard-drinking overweight traffic managers and warehouse supervisors.  It is a commonplace to find women running distribution operations – big ones.  It is not rare for a female executive to have complete responsibility for a corporate supply chain. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

It’s an old joke, and not very funny anymore.  “Will the last person to leave (fill in name of city) please turn out the lights?”  We’re not picking on Flint for the sake of beating up on the downtrodden, but Flint is an exemplar – the poster child – for communities in economic death throes.  Goodnight and Goodbye, by the way, has no connection with the Jonas Brothers’ song.
The dynamics of community collapse are complex; Flint has been dying for well over twenty-five years.  But, at the core, the issue is that Flint is irrelevant to global automotive supply chains, and that’s the death knell.  Hey, Flint is irrelevant to domestic automotive supply chains.  It may even be irrelevant to the General Motors supply chain. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

It seems irrelevant to talk about growth and expansion when cable news assures us daily that the end of the economy as we know it is fast approaching.  Truth is, some – maybe many – companies and industries are doing just fine, thank you, in this difficult period.  So, they’ve got to face up to planning for growth – big growth, fast growth.
The, there’s the phenomenon of what CSCMP’s Rick Blasgen calls the “post-recession rally.”  His point is that, when the overall economy rebounds, it’s likely to be both fast and comprehensive – and that distribution operations are going to have to gear up to handle pent-up demand, not missing a beat in the customer service equation. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

We’ve been sneaking up on the green question for a while, now.  In the long term – and we stand by our long-term view – going green is getting easier.  The very fine book, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Management – An Essential Guide for 21st-Century Managers, concedes – even encourages – the necessity of green initiatives in getting the most out of the resources this wonderfully habitable rock (third from the sun!) provides us. more...

By Art Van Bodegraven

How can we stop from drowning in a rising tide of SKUs? Art Van Bodegraven discusses tactics and techniques for survival, along with the positive side of SKU proliferation.

By Art Van Bodegraven

A pointed follow-up to last year's analysis of developments in the "new" European Union, this piece pulls no punches in examining the meaning of the political fallout from referendum defeat and budget failure.

By Art Van Bodegraven

The European Union is in the process of evolving into a powerful economic force, and is no longer merely an interesting club.  The impact of this development on Continental – and global – supply chains could be enormous.

By Jud Puterbaugh

You have just spent the last 6 months living, breathing, eating (but not sleeping much) with one and only one focus - "getting live" with your new system. Congratulations you are now "live"! So what do you do now? No, it is not time for Disney World! Actually, chances are you should be finishing the implementation...

By James M. Apple, Jr.

Detailed design of conveyor systems involves analyses that reach far beyond simply the selection of the most appropriate system concept. This paper discusses issues and trade-offs in systems for batch picking and sortation of full cases...

By Chuck LaMacchia

Inventory is a significant and visible asset in most companies - often the largest. Executives and shareholders have focused on inventory levels for years, but it has frequently been reduced arbitrarily, without a full understanding of supply chain implications. This paper discusses approaches to sustainable, and appropriate, inventory reduction.

By Catherine L. Cooper and Stephen Mulaik

A comprehensive profile on your warehouse reveals characteristics that allow you to make decisions on storage and handling alternatives, slotting options, pick line requirements, system requirements, pick methods, and order releasing strategies. With more detailed analysis you can even predict how your warehouse will operate, providing you the invaluable opportunity of being able to prepare for the future.

By Art Van Bodegraven

In the US, we don't think much about logistics in Cuba.
Nevertheless, Cuba is out there. And, Cuba faces logistics challenges and opportunities just like everyone else. Maybe more so.
The Progress Group participated in the US Logistics Leaders' delegation to Cuba in early March. This article reports our observations.

By Art Van Bodegraven

How is Walter Payton an analogy for improving the Supply Chain? It has to do with speed, agility, flexibility, and more.

By Stephen Mulaik

Most warehousing firms misunderstand why they lose on this issue. ...but using radio frequency terminals (RF) to scan product into and out of locations for the purpose of real-time inventory visibility or better inventory accuracy is only part of the story.

By Art Van Bodegraven

Why do so many implementations end in disappointment . . . even in catastrophe? What are the key factors driving failure . . . or success?

By Stephen Mulaik

Why do some companies get a return out of RF picking methods and others get disillusioned? The answer lies in how a firm views the technology. The successful ones look at RF as a means to an end. The less successful seem to feel that RF alone will inherently improve their operations. Stated simply -you get out of RF what you put into it. For some, no matter how much you put into it, it still is not the answer....

By Art Van Bodegraven

For most of us, Vietnam means a long-ago war – In the new millennium, though, Vietnam is a real country, with a real economy – part of the new global economy.  It is full of real people, living real lives, and logistics plays a part in those lives.
Art Van Bodegraven reports his findings from VietNam from a recent visit.

By Drew Hale and Art Van Bodegraven

Planning warehouse and distribution centers able to keep up with rapidly changing supply chain strategies has become more difficult than ever. Adaptability is becoming as important as operating efficiency as a criterion for measuring success in facility planning.

By Randall L. Telfer

In the rush to assess the relevance, scope, and proper timing of outsourcing, an objective methodology is paramount to successfully discovering the path that takes you where you need to go... The methodology that we have used successfully covers seven key areas....

By Bruce Strahan and Art Van Bodegraven

Supply chain concepts and logistics - how are they different, and is it time for the former to replace the latter? We contend that they are different enough to be recognized individually, and, yet, are so tightly interwoven that they should not be considered separately.

By Jud Puterbaugh

In this and many other industries, all too often software consumers and their vendors find themselves in less than healthy relationships; contrary to popular opinion it doesn't have to be this way.  Find out why this is harmful to you and your organization and what can be done to correct these relationships or better yet prevent them from developing this way from the start.

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