Articles
Global Logistics
Three Supply Chain Risks and How to Address Them
Companies face three main sourcing supply chain risks: regulatory, brand erosion, and social compliance. Any one of these issues could lead to lost profits, product recalls, and customer erosion. At the same time, the longer the supply chain—with more levels of suppliers, disparate geographies, and other middle men, the more complex and challenging compliance becomes. […]
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How to Forge Successful Value Chain Partnerships
Q: How can value chain partners cooperate to create and share efficiencies? A: With an unprecedented global reach, access to new markets, increased regulation, and huge advances in technology, today’s supply chain environment is more complex than ever. Coupled with increasing customer demands for speed, flexibility, cost efficiency, quality, and customization, it is very difficult […]
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A Supply Chain World Tour
Demand-driven logistics spans the world…in practice and in print. For a host of reasons, U.S. shippers and consignees are taking control of how they pull—and push—global product to market. Shifting demand dynamics, geopolitical volatility, currency fluctuations, government interference, lengthening and deepening supply networks, and cost reduction directives have conflated to consternate even the best supply […]
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Global Logistics—March 2015
Hong Kong: A Space Odyssey Hong Kong is one of the world’s most densely populated cities. Remarkably, only 30 percent of its land is actually developed—a reflection of the area’s mountainous terrain. Hong Kong historically has focused much of its infrastructure development on costly projects to reclaim land from the sea. Accordingly, these constraints have […]
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What is Globalization Doing to the World of Logistics?
Since the early 1990s, global trade agreements have divided the world up into larger and larger chunks of trading blocks where goods can flow virtually unimpeded across national borders that once protected their precious industries from outside competition with tariffs, duties and penalties. The Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico was signed […]
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Rethinking the Global Supply Chain
Shifting global dynamics and internal business process changes are compelling manufacturers and retailers to challenge the status quo and reinvent their supply chains.
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Global Logistics—August 2014
Only the Good Drive Young With all the talk about the U.S. driver shortage, it’s easy to forget that similar labor constraints exist elsewhere around the world. For example, recruiting younger people into the trucking industry has become a challenge in the United Kingdom, according to Barriers to Youth Employment in the Freight Transport Sector, […]
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Lauren Corbett: Help is on the Way
Lauren Corbett is program assistant, acquisitions and logistics, at International Relief and Development (IRD), a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization in Arlington, Va. She joined IRD in 2014. Responsibilities: Working with donors to obtain in-kind donations and arranging to ship them to consignees for use in programs around the world. Experience: Teaching assistant, Aldea Yanapay, Peru; intern, […]
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Flexibility Key to Success in Liquor Logistics
The next time you settle down after a hard day with a glass of wine or a mixed drink to help you unwind, take a moment to understand how that alcoholic beverage came to fill your glass. A lot depends on which country you are drinking it in and the many tariffs designed to protect […]
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Global Logistics—October 2014
Game of Drones In the latest installment of the drone saga, German logistics company DHL is using a "parcelcopter" to make deliveries to the North Sea island of Juist, home to around 1,700 people. The company claims this is the first instance of unmanned aircraft transporting parcels in Europe. Joining the ranks of Amazon and […]
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