Publications & Videos

In October 2022, the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry, non-profits, and academia, for a webinar hosted by the MIT Global SCALE Network, to discuss the effects of environmental awareness, Covid-19, the rise of digitization, the e-commerce boom, and the rise of energy prices on the innovation of mobility. Digitization evolves with and also fosters four major ongoing techno-economic developments in logistics: automation, connectivity, electrification, and shared ownership.

In March 2022, the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry, non-profits, and academia, for a webinar hosted by the MIT Global SCALE Network, to discuss how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, in all its variants, has rattled global supply chains with shockwave disruptions up, down, and sideways along the chains in a phenomenon known as the Bullwhip Effect.

The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry, non-profits, and academia to discuss the effect of the war in Ukraine on global supply chains during the June 2022 Supply Chain Exchange Monthly research briefing, which also served as The MIT Global SCALE Network quarterly webinar.

View the interactive website.

Download the report in pdf format.

If there is one characteristic that sums up the state of supply chains today it is the need to navigate extreme change. Our research over the last three years culminating in the 2022 State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report shows the same can be said for supply chain sustainability (SCS). SCS is a moving target.

Last year, when the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was still escalating, we expected the crisis to dampen companies’ enthusiasm for investing in supply chain sustainability (SCS). Enterprises would surely divert all their attention to combating the pandemic. Remarkably, the survey results suggest that Covid-19 did not significantly slow the push to make supply chains more sustainable. More than 80% of survey respondents in this year’s report claimed the crisis had no impact or increased their firm’s commitments to SCS.

On January 12, 2021, the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) convened a virtual roundtable to explore key topics across supplier diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). Participants represented nine industries within manufacturing, retail, and services, and their companies were at various points in their supplier diversity (SD) journey, which enabled an exchange of experiences and fresh perspectives on the challenges, opportunities, and future of supplier diversity.

MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) hosted a virtual roundtable for its Supply Chain Exchange partners in which leading companies discussed predictive analytics. The event combined presentations from academia and industry with sharing by all attendees of their experiences, challenges, and ideas. To encourage candor, no statements in this report have been attributed to any specific company.

In this inaugural edition, the MIT CTL and CSCMP teamed up to explore how sustainability practices are being implemented in global supply chains and what that means for companies and professionals in the State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2020.

Download the State of Supply Chain Sustainability 2020 report.

The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry, non-profits, and academia to discuss circular supply chains during the December 2019 roundtable.

Download the full report

On October 15–16, 2019, the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics hosted representatives from 18 organizations for a roundtable on data management for machine learning in the supply chain. Six sessions focused on: 1) the importance of data, 2) managing organizational transformation, 3) organizational data governance, 4) data collection, 5) data wrangling, and 6) data visualization. Each session began with a short presentation followed by wide-ranging discussions. To encourage candor, statements have not been attributed to named organizations. 

Representatives from nine manufacturers, eight transportation companies, eight startups, a retailer, and an industry association joined experts from MIT for a highly interactive one-and-a-half-day roundtable on the use of blockchain technology in the supply chain. A variety of industries were represented, including healthcare, aerospace, food, mining, electronics, chemical, fashion, and logistics.

The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) facilitated a series of roundtable discussions in conjunction with Uber Freight’s Deliver ‘19 conference. On September 4, 2019, more than 150 participants contributed to the discussion. The group was comprised mostly of shippers invited by Uber Freight and industry sponsors of CTL. Overall, the sessions focused on a better understanding of how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the relationships between shippers, carriers, receivers, drivers, and third parties.

Executive Summary AI, ML

MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) held a highly interactive one-and-a-half-day roundtable on the use