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CAMBRIDGE, MASS, February 4, 2021 – The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and Walmart have teamed up to create a new custom course in supply chain management for Walmart supply chain associates from underrepresented communities who are on a leadership track. 

AgeLab Director Joseph F. Coughlin writes in Forbes:

AgeLab Director Joseph F. Coughlin answers questions from the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging:

Finding that information is one of the goals of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Freight Lab. David Correll, MIT research scientist and co-director of the Freight Lab, believes truck drivers, dispatchers, and logistics managers all need to better utilize available time. Increased time spent driving, rather than waiting at a dock, means increased truck capacity, he said.

According to Yossi Sheffi, professor at MIT and director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, supply chain is typically the “asphalt of the road” —that is, when it works, there’s no need to talk about it. 

MIT SCM ‘00 grad Marc Boyle’s company, Boyle Transportation is cited in the Wall Street Journal for its role in vaccine distribution in the U.S.

“Moving vaccines and other pharmaceutical products with strict temperature requirements is a delicate business. Carriers that specialize in such shipments typically provide what is known as temperature-validated service. Sensors and other devices monitor conditions inside the trailer and record data to confirm that the temperature remains within a certain range.

The vaccination effort that has kicked off will rely on a sprawling chain of people, processes and connections that will all have to work to make the campaign successful. The mass mobilization is one of the largest in the U.S. since the country’s factories were repurposed during World War II, the WSJ’s Sarah Krouse, Jared S. Hopkins, and Anna Wilde Mathews write, and relies on factory workers, truck drivers, pilots, pharmacists and health-care workers, among others.

Pandemic plus holidays? That equals a huge increase in online shopping and about 800 million more packages to be delivered than last year. But shipping companies and merchants that aren’t Amazon aren’t handling it all that well.

A new book collecting insights from MIT CTL researchers and others, Supply Chain Management and Logistics in Emerging Markets: Selected Papers from the 2018 MIT–Scale Latin America Conference, has just been published in hardcover and digital formats. The collection of research was edited by Hugo Yoshizaki, Christopher Mejía Argueta, and Marina Guimarães Mattos.

Director of MIT Digital Supply Chain Transformation Lab, Maria Jesus Saenz spoke with the MIT Technology Review Insights series. "Turbulent times can expose weaknesses in distribution chains, putting stress on chokepoints and reducing access to critical components, suppliers, and capital.

"Approaches for Locating and Staffing FEMA's Disaster Recovery Centers", won Decision Sciences Journal Best Paper Award for 2019. Authors Julia Moline, Jarrod Goentzel, and Erica Gralla were awarded at the Decision Science Institute Conference on 23 Nov. 2020.

MIT Sustainable Supply Chains Director Alexis Bateman recently spoke to the Washington Post with some tips on doing your homework on products labeled "green" to sort out what you're really buying.

Dr. Yossi Sheffi, an MIT professor who specializes in supply chain management, said reduced air travel is going to impact items imported from overseas, like iPhones and computer chips.  “I would expect problems in stuff that usually flies. Anything that is expensive and small flies,” Dr. Sheffi said.Sheffi recently published a book—”The New (Ab)Normal—which examines how COVID-19 has disrupted the global supply chain.

When it comes to climate change and sustainability, people claim one thing but do another.

Consumers choose economic development over serious climate initiatives. Corporations don't invest in meaningful change because consumers won't pay for it. And governments cannot lead if citizens won't follow. The battle to prevent climate change through behavior modification, regulation, or personal deprivation has already been lost. Yossi Sheffi explains why the solution is a collaborative investment in developing technologies that can reverse climate change.

A group of 400 dedicated online learners concluded nine to 24 months of learning to pass their comprehensive final exams, earning their MITx MicroMasters® Program Credentials in Supply Chain Management. These new credential-holders bring the total number of holders to 2,640 from 115 countries. The majority of credential-holders hail from the United States, India, Brazil, Australia, China, Egypt, Canada, Canada and Mexico.

Ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Prof. Yossi Sheffi comments on one of the most widely discussed issues in the campaign: trade relations between the U.S. and China. He writes:

The Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward China has compounded uncertainty on U.S.-China trade relations. In considering how the presidential elections may affect the flow of international trade, companies should avoid the accepted wisdom.

AgeLab Research Scientist Bryan Reimer commented to CNN Business on Tesla's "full self-driving" beta testing:

Tesla's technology can't be expected to immediately match human performance yet, as the artificial intelligence-powered system needs real-world experience to gather data, learn and improve. But having a raw, student driver on roads also raises questions of whether Tesla is doing enough to mitigate safety risks.

Technologies like solar panels and batteries help us slow down climate change, but they’re not inherently perfect. In this episode of the TILclimate podcast (Today I Learned Climate), produced by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, Suzanne Greene of MIT Sustainable Supply Chains and the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative sits down with host Laur Hesse Fisher to help us navigate how to massively scale up clean tech while making a conscious and dedicated effort to ensure people’s rights, health, and safety.

In his new book The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19, published today, MIT CTL Director Prof. Yossi Sheffi maps how companies grappled with the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic and how they can survive and thrive as the crisis subsides. Sheffi pays particular attention to supply chain's role in helping companies manage and recover from the pandemic.

MIT Sustainable Supply Chains Director Alexis Bateman was interviewed by the Seattle Times:

“Some of the language is a little bit deceiving,” said Alexis Bateman, director of the MIT Sustainable Supply Chains Initiative. “Not to minimize the value of animal welfare, fair trade or fair wages,” but these attributes don’t necessarily have a direct impact on reducing emissions.

AgeLab's Bryan Reimer has been providing insightful commentary and context on Massachusetts's Automobile Right to Repair Law, the status of which Massachusetts voters will decide in November. He writes in an article in Forbes:

(Inside Science) -- A driverless car isn't driven by a person but is controlled by a system of sensors and processors. In many countries, tests of autonomous driving have been happening for years. Germany wants to permit driverless cars across the country by 2022. As the technology develops, researchers are continuing to explore ways to make the algorithms used to make driving decisions better, and roadways safer. Bryan Reimer is quoted,

Engineering and Supply Chain Management have traditionally been male-dominated fields. This is slowly changing. According to the “2018 Women in Supply Chain Survey” by Gartner, the average percentage of women in Supply Chain roles has increased from 35% to 37% over a three-year period from 2016-2018. During this same time period as well as before and after, the contribution of women at MIT CTL has grown considerably.