Jeff Hedges, president of OPEX Material Handling, outlines some of the major challenges confronting e-commerce providers, including rising costs, tax issues and global regulation.
Megatrends are large, long-term changes coalescing today that will birth shorter-term business and societal trends of tomorrow, says Kas Kasravi, HP fellow with Hewlett-Packard. Kasravi points out a few of these megatrends and posits interesting possibilities for their impact.
Today's lift trucks yield a treasure trove of information about equipment status and productivity. Lynda Stephens, senior application engineer with EnerSys, discusses how to get the most from it.
Previously a company with three distinct supply chains serving commercial businesses, e-commerce customers and a chain of brick-and-mortar stores, Office Depot now operates a single omni-channel supply chain with one inventory base.
The cloud has come to voice, and virtually every other aspect of material-handling within the supply chain. Keith Phillips, president and chief executive officer of Voxware, relates the evolution of the ground-breaking technology.
Accurate data on the millions of rules, regulations, tariffs and classifications that govern international trade is crucial to global trade management but not sufficient, says Anthony Hardenburgh, vice president of global trade content at Amber Road.
As global trade management software has improved visibility to international shipments, companies have been able to enhance performance measures, moving from departmental indicators to broader metrics that drive coordination between departments, says Stephanie Miles, senior vice president of commercial services at Amber Road.
Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies wanted a single global trade management solution that could integrate to two different SAP platforms for automated screening of export customers.
"Omni-channel" distribution is replacing the all-channel mode. Dave Kilzer, senior vice president of supply chain solutions with Idhasoft, explains the difference between the two concepts.
John Hayes, Vice President of U.S. Sales and Marketing with Seegrid, traces the history of robotics in distribution environments, and tells why robots don't automatically lead to a loss of jobs.