I recently asked my fellow Strategic Sourcing & Procurement group members on LinkedIn for topics they’d like to cover on our monthly conference calls this summer. Lots of great ideas, but the one that caught my eye as an opportunity to have an immediate impact was the suggestion by a Supply Chain Analyst at a [...]
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As many of you know, the Category Managers who contribute to Supply Excellence also create a quarterly report called SupplyWatch. The Q2 issue is posted and includes detailed category breakdowns for…
Metals
Plastics, Rubber & Raw Materials
Transportation
Electronics, Electrical & IT Hardware
Paper & Packaging
Services & Capital Goods, Construction & Engineering
This quarter’s feature article is on Working Capital [...]
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Supply Watch report subscribers likely know about this (and have hopefully registered already), but the Category Management team is holding one of their Top 5 Categories to Source Now webinars tomorrow. The details:
Thursday April 1st at 11am Eastern Time (3:00 GMT)
Register here.
On the agenda tomorrow are:
Mike Petro, Lead Category Manager, North America
Loriann Andersen, Category Manager, [...]
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As the transportation industry braces its self for the start of a new year, the railroad industry seems to be in an excellent position to thrive quickly. Even though The Association of American Railroads stated that mid-December intermodal traffic continues to be down year-over-year, volumes seems to be stabilizing and even seeing a few increases. [...]
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As many of you know, the Category Managers who contribute to Supply Excellence also create a quarterly report called SupplyWatch. The Q1 issue is up and includes detailed category breakdowns for…
Metals
Plastics, Rubber & Raw Materials
Transportation
Electronics, Electrical & IT Hardware
Paper & Packaging
Services & Capital Goods, Construction & Engineering
In addition, there is a feature article on Cutting [...]
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The long-awaited report from the Department of Transportation on the safety of Mexican trucks crossing the US-Mexico border stated that the Mexican trucks’ out-of-service rates were similar to those of the United States’ trucks. The report found that in 2008, 21.2% of inspections of Mexican trucks resulted in taking trucks out of service, while 21.8% of inspections of US trucks resulted in trucks being taken out of service. During those inspections, 1.2% of Mexican drivers were taken out of service, while 6.9% of US drivers were taken out of service.
One item that was highlighted in the report was the lack of consistency in reporting of traffic convictions incurred by Mexican truck drivers. Although the inspections were done in the same manner in which Canadian drivers are compared to US drivers, some groups have questioned the validity of the inspection process, since the inspections mainly took place in US-Mexico commercial zones instead of randomly throughout the US.
Earlier this year, Congress chose to end a Bush Administration sponsored test of long haul trucking between Mexico and the US. Many argued that the program needed to be ended due to safety concerns, yet this recent report would indicate that Mexican truckers are at least as safe as domestic truck drivers. This report does make one ponder the true reason for the cessation of the program…
Was it because of job protectionism? Was it due to the recession? Were there safety issues that this report doesn’t reflect?
No matter what the true reason was, it’s hard to deny the results of the DOT’s report, and the industry should be eager to see what type of program the Obama Administration intends to promote.
Rachel Rutkoski is a Senior Indirect Services Category Manager for North America in Ariba’s Global Services Organization. Rachel is recognized by the Institute for Supply Management as a Certified Professional in Supply Management (C.P.S.M.) and has several years experience as a supply chain and transportation analyst in Fortune 500 companies.
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UPS is currently in labor discussions over a new contract with its 1,200 mechanics who work on UPS’s fleet of aircrafts. Although the workers represented by the Teamsters have overwhelmingly voted to approve a strike, UPS has stated that their vote is a typical negotiation strategy and that the company is not alarmed. The two sides have been in talks for almost three years and several rounds of negotiations have taken place between the two sides and even more negotiations are scheduled to settle outstanding issues. While a strike would be difficult to actually start due to the legal classification of the negotiations covered by the Railway Labor Act (RLA) and the National Mediation Board (NMB), if a strike would take place it would affect approximately 16% of UPS’s 15.5 million daily deliveries that are made by air.
It is surprising that UPS has allowed these negotiations to continue into the peak 4th quarter shipping season. While a strike would be difficult to start it is not impossible. When the freight industry is clearly a shipper’s market, some shippers are alarmed at any risk that may cause a disruption to service and are quick to put a contingency plan in place that moves freight to the competition. In an industry that tends to say that FedEx’s core competency is their airfreight movements, it is even more surprising that UPS has let this situation linger.
This labor negotiation brings back up the labor battle between UPS and FedEx. In last quarter’s Supply Watch the battle between FedEx and UPS were detailed out and many were anxious to see if the Senate would back the House of Representatives and pass FAA Reauthorization Act permanently affecting the labor landscape of the industry. The Senate announced mid September it would not pass the bill by the time the current bill expired at the end of September but intends to vote on the bill by the end of this calendar year.
Rachel Rutkoski is a Senior Indirect Services Category Manager for North America in Ariba’s Global Services Organization. Rachel is recognized by the Institute for Supply Management as a Certified Professional in Supply Management (C.P.S.M.) and has several years experience as a supply chain and transportation analyst in Fortune 500 companies.
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With the drop in global consumer demand, well publicized glut of capacity in ocean freight and cost cutting objectives in many companies, we’ve been fielding a lot of questions about ocean freight contracts and securing lower long-term fixed rates lately. The market is at an low time low and now is the time to act, [...]
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The NYTimes ran an interesting article on Google’s attempt to mine the “deep web”, that area beyond strings of simple keywords where complex questions are answered. It’s no easy task. Logic, analysis and context are tough things to perfect and scale for web crawling bots. So despite recently indexing their trillionth website and revolutionizing access [...]
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Since “risk” is the operative word for our current economic times and the transportation industry’s challenges can ripple up and down the supply chain, it’s critically important to watch the news and trends in the industry in order to anticipate and minimize risk. Unfortunately, anyone watching the employment numbers in the industry or 60 Minutes‘ [...]
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