On December 11-12, 2024, the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab held a workshop in Cambridge, MA with industry, academic, non-profit and government stakeholders to discuss fuel supply chains in the 2024 hurricane season and establish a foundation for developing a fuel response playbook for future disasters.
This report summarizes the key discussions and takeaways, operational challenges faced in recent hurricanes, best practices, and important concepts to form the foundation of a fuel response playbook in future disasters.
On January 29, 2025, the Supply Chain Analysis Network (SCAN), American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), and the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab (HSCL) held a workshop in Memphis, TN with industry, academic, and government stakeholders to discuss the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) as a “Wicked Problem”: that is, a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.” This report summarizes the key discussions, insights, and action items from this workshop which focused on building resilience, supply chain disruption, and emergency response coordination. The workshop brought together professionals from multiple sectors, including food supply, fuel distribution, freight logistics, and emergency management, to address the coordination challenges associated with catastrophic events such as the NMSZ and other large-scale disruptions in both the Midwest US and the rest of the country.
MIT’s Warehouse of the Future Initiative develops research on highly automated, interconnected warehouses. This work highlights five major disruptions—cyberattacks, outages, sabotage, technology failures, and accidents—along with 26 vulnerabilities that threaten highly automated warehouse operations. Reliance on cloud-based systems and Robotics-as-a-Service expands the cyberattack surface, while advanced hardware like Autonomous Mobile Robots introduces new safety and operational complexities. To build resilience, businesses should develop robust cybersecurity measures, enhance workforce training, and create effective risk mitigation strategies. This includes improving technology evaluation, vendor management, and system integration, supported by strong security standards that guard against attacks on suppliers.
On 6 – 7 November 2024, the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) hosted a roundtable titled “Approaching Zero Emission Trucking: Challenges and Opportunities.” Facilitated by the MIT FreightLab and the MIT Sustainable Supply Chain Lab, the roundtable brought together some 30 stakeholders, including motor carriers, shippers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), researchers, and government experts, as well as researchers from CTL for productive and wide-ranging discussions. Participants shared their thoughts on identifying, measuring, and managing Scope 3 emissions; emission-reduction strategies, including zero-emission (ZE) trucking solutions; and the risks and challenges of implementing emission-reduction initiatives. They also identified potential research topics that would provide value to their organizations and industries.
In January 2024, the Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology held a roundtable on the theme of scaling construction capacity after disasters, convening individuals from academia, nonprofit, and public and private sector organizations. Participants brought varied perspectives, including considerations of supply chains, government policies, building codes, and private sector construction operations. To ensure candor, the event was held under Chatham House Rule. The roundtable used recent natural disasters and their housing challenges to frame discussions around two goals: (1) identify approaches to increase capacity for rapidly deployable housing solutions after disasters and (2) capture policy and operational constraints that hinder implementation of those rapidly deployable housing solutions. The event and this report seek to catalyze systemic research and provide discrete recommendations to address the challenges and opportunities to restore housing for disaster survivors.
This paper delves into the critical aspect of demand forecasting within the broader context of optimizing drop trailer management in volatile networks, with a specific focus on a large pallet manufacturer’s supply chain operation. The study underscores the importance of accurate demand forecasting as a foundational element for informing subsequent optimization models.
To enhance understanding of congestion points at ports and provide visibility into the incoming goods flow into the USA, this study focuses on maritime ports, using the Port of Boston and New York/New Jersey as case studies. Based on the Automatic Information System (AIS) data, we aim to develop predictive models for port congestion status and the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of container ships. Additionally, we analyze historical commodity flow data to forecast future values, weights, volumes and categories based on Harmonized System (HS) codes.
The warehouse of the future represents a paradigm shift in warehouse design and operation. It is the industry’s response to the burgeoning growth of e-commerce, worldwide supply chain disruptions including warehouse labor shortages in developed markets, and increasing awareness of the significant volume of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions emitted by warehouses.
The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) convened participants from industry and academia to discuss the present and future of nanostore r
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
