News

By Chris Creyts and Nora Weisskopf, SCM class of 2016.  In response to the growth of their e-commerce businesses, many retailers are looking for ways to reduce the supply chain costs associated with internet orders. Some retailers are starting to look upstream in their supply chains, and are requesting that manufacturers fulfill orders via drop shipping. The change in delivery practices creates a number of key issues, including the potential for impacting per-unit distribution costs for manufacturers.

Lombard, Illinois USA (June 23, 2016) -- Chris Caplice, executive director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, will receive the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' (CSCMP) 2016 Distinguished Service Award. He will be presented with the award during the Opening General Session at CSCMP's Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida on Monday, September 26, 2016.

According to surveys, no matter the age, American drivers see potential benefits in autonomous vehicles, but they want to be sure the technology works. Safety features and the ability to manually intervene with the vehicles' self-driving technology are concerns for potential drivers. AgeLab’s (New England University Transportation Center Director) Joe Coughlin and The Hartford’s Jodi Olshevski discuss findings from their study showing age may matter less than we think in driverless car technology adoption. 

By Jarrod Goentzel and Fredrik Eng Larsson. About 90% of world trade is carried by sea, so you might imagine that being able to track the status of ocean shipments accurately and in real time would be a critical goal for companies looking to improve the management of their supply chains. Yet this operational Holy Grail remains elusive, despite advances in information technology.

A Scandinavian courier company, PostNord AB, and supermarket chain, ICA AB, are testing the new service with about 20 households in the Swedish capital, promising that messengers will remove their shoes and unpack online deliveries, even when customers are away. The pioneering service hinges on a new add-on lock, which customers must install on their doors and which messengers can open with their smartphones. Made by Swedish startup Glue AB, the lock allows residents to decide remotely when to allow access to their homes.

Humanitarian Response Lab co-hosts Health and Humanitarian Logistics Conference. The main objective of the conference is to interactively discuss the opportunities and challenges in the sector in an open, neutral platform. Health and humanitarian related topics such as disaster preparedness and response, long-term development and humanitarian aid, and global health delivery are examined from the non-governmental, corporate, governmental, and academic perspectives. 

MIT Office of Digital Learning-- The second in a new series of open online courses, part of MIT's MicroMaster’s program in supply chain management, is open for enrollment. The field of supply chain management (SCM) is on the rise. For organizations, the logistics behind moving products from factories and warehouses to storefronts and doorsteps across the globe is critical.

Transitioning to an omni-channel supply chain undoubtedly brings many challenges for retailers. However, omni-channel is also a major source of supply chain innovation. The journey involves multiple changes that are forcing companies to rethink the way they design, build, implement, and manage global supply chains, as well as how they relate to key supply chain players.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — While Amazon.com Inc., A.P. Moller Maersk A/S and other big shippers look to the skies to speed up deliveries with drones, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists are setting their sights far lower: Underground. Researchers at the new MIT Institute for Data, Systems and Society, along with other MIT­affiliated logistic R&D groups, are examining the viability of underground networks of small, autonomous vehicles to deliver goods to businesses in crowded urban centers.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.– High-­tech logistics systems have quickened the delivery of goods from manufacturing hubs to big­-city markets in recent years. But speeding up the so­ called last mile, from a local distribution center to a retailer or a customer’s home, has remained a challenge, especially in crowded urban centers.

By Yossi Sheffi. When the Berlin Wall came down on November, 9, 1989, people across the world celebrated its destruction. The Wall was constructed by the communist regime in East Germany to prevent citizens from fleeing to the democratic west. The barrier that blocked the free flow of people and goods became a powerful symbol of oppression. A little more than a quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, international wall building appears to be on the rise again.

What do Class 8 trucks and cell phones have in common? Their end-of-life (EOL) strategies are shaped in large part by each product’s characteristics as well as current market conditions.

That trend was equally clear at the recent Supply Chain Student Research Expo put on by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Global SCALE Network. This annual program brings together more than 100 graduate students from around the world to present the real-world supply chain projects they are working on. It was not unusual to see, for example, a student from Greece and another from India collaborating on an inventory management analysis, or students from Malaysia and China working together on a food and beverage metrics project.

MIT’s Alexis Bateman writes that vertical integration is gaining favor as companies address quality and sustainability, but it also demands a close look at business priorities - Companies have been vertically integrating operations for many years to gain more control over the supply of key materials. Henry Ford’s ownership of rubber plantations and iron ore mines that provided raw materials for automobiles is a classic example.

MIT to create new center at the world’s busiest port in Ningbo, China - The government of Ningbo, China — home of the world’s busiest port — is partnering with the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) to create a global center for supply chain education and research.

Discussions of self-driving vehicles are often accompanied by highly confident predictions: Visions of the future include whole networks of automated cars seamlessly zipping around metropolitan areas, safely and efficiently, with every person inside them a passive, hands-off passenger. On Tuesday at MIT, the U.S. government’s chief auto safety official offered a more restrained view, suggesting that technology could provide important new safeguards for cars, while observing that it is too soon to say precisely what form vehicular automation will eventually take.

The first massive open online course, or “MOOC,” made its way onto the educational scene back in 2008 as a model for delivering learning content online to any person who wants to take a course, with no limit on attendance. These interactive learning spaces have not only eradicated limits on the number of students who can attend a course, they have also helped to create a very scalable and affordable way to deliver all types of education – supply chain executive education included.

“We’re like Rodney Dangerfield—we don’t get no respect.” Professor Yossi Sheffi, a professor of supply chain management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), chuckled when I asked him why there’s such a shortage in supply chain talent. He, like a number of supply chain professionals I spoke to over the past month, was lamenting the fact that the term supply chain doesn’t do a great job of suggesting the hard, dynamic work involved in running the manufacturing, movement and storage of a product.

By Yossi Sheffi. One of the mysteries of the stock market's decline at the beginning of 2016 is why such a precipitous fall occurred at a time when economies are reaping the benefits of lower energy costs. As oil prices parachuted to depths not seen since the tech crash of the early 2000s, factories, transportation carriers, and consumers pocketed substantial savings on fuel costs. The plunge in oil prices transfers about $1,500 every year from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and other oil producers to the pockets of every US driver.

By Yossi Sheffi. The controversy over reshoring has flared up again thanks largely to some research published by the managing consulting firm A. T. Kearney in December 2015. - Reshoring refers to the practice of bringing manufacturing jobs that were previously off-shored to countries such as China back to the United States. Some people argue that this trend has accelerated over recent years and is reviving the nation’s manufacturing might.

By Yossi Sheffi. The controversy over reshoring has flared up again thanks largely to some research published by the managing consulting firm A. T. Kearney in December 2015 -- Reshoring refers to the practice of bringing manufacturing jobs that were previously off-shored to countries such as China back to the United States. Some people argue that this trend has accelerated over recent years and is reviving the nation’s manufacturing might.

ASHLAND, MA – June 14, 2016 – OnProcess Technology, a global pioneer in service supply chain management and optimization, today announced results of a joint research project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Supply Chain Management (SCM) Program, which found that by using Internet of Things (IoT) data to predict machine failures, companies can reduce costly inventory stock while improving their ability to meet service levels.

On January 4, 2016, MIT alum Jeff Silver, along with his wife Marianne and two of their sons, visited the Massachusetts of Institute of Technology (MIT) to gift the Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) with $2.5 million to help fund the Center’s ongoing efforts in supply chain research and education. The gift will be divided into two funds:

Dr. Yossi Sheffi, a professor at MIT, said that companies have made great strides in improving the resiliency of their business, but that they still have a long way to go, especially in the area of cyber-security. 

Watch the full interview.

By Yossi Sheffi. Plunging commodity prices are unnerving many companies to a point where they are implementing drastic cuts to their operations and workforce. Adjusting to market shifts is sound management practice, but not when the course changes are so extreme that the company becomes too debilitated to take advantage of an eventual market upturn. Thinking about a turnaround in commodities prices might seem naive at best at this time, but it’s easy to underestimate how quickly markets can rebound and catch companies flat-footed.