They didn't know it at the time, but for the millions of folks who bought books, CDs and DVDs from Amazon.com in July were also buying a shot at a brush with fame. As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, the pioneering Internet bookseller teamed up with UPS to make special deliveries to randomly selected customers across the country. And it wasn't the merchandise that made the deliveries special.
Scores of Amazon customers opened their doors to find a favorite actor, musician, athlete or author personally delivering their Amazon.com order alongside a UPS driver. Among the celebrities who took part were actor Harrison Ford, who delivered a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" DVD; Grammy-award winning musician Moby, who hand-delivered his recently released CD, "Hotel;" and Jason Alexander (George Costanza), who delivered a new "Seinfeld" DVD. (To view streaming video footage of these special deliveries, visit www.amazon.com.)
July 16, 2005, marked 10 years since founder and CEO Jeff Bezos opened the virtual doors of Amazon.com from his Seattle-area garage. Since 1995, the Web site has expanded its product offerings from books to include music, videos, tennis rackets, live Maine lobsters and loose diamonds. Over the past 10 years, UPS has delivered more than 175 million Amazon.com packages.
Many chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) are focused on reorganizing their supply chains in today’s business climate—but as they do so, they should be careful to avoid common pitfalls that can derail their efforts.
That’s according to recent research from Gartner that identifies critical organizational design mistakes that will prevent supply chain leaders from delivering on business goals.
“Supply chain reorganization is high up on CSCOs’ agendas, yet many are unclear about how organization design outcomes link to business goals,” according to Alan O'Keeffe, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice.
The research revealed that the most successful projects radically redesign supply chain structure based on distinct organizational needs “while prioritizing balance, strength, and speed as key business objectives.”
“Our findings reveal that the leaders who achieved success took a more radical approach to redesigning their supply chain organizations, resulting in the ability to deliver on new and transformational operating models,” O’Keefe said in a statement announcing the findings.
The research was based on a series of interviews with supply chain leaders as well as data gathered from Gartner clients. It revealed that successful organizations assigned responsibilities to reporting lines in radically diverse ways, and that they focused on the unique characteristics of their business to design supply chain organizations that were tailored to meet their needs.
“The commonality between successful organizations is that their leaders intentionally prioritized the organizational goals of balance, strength and speed into their design process,” said O’Keeffe. “In doing so, they sidestepped the most common pitfalls in supply chain reorganization design.”
The three most common errors, according to Gartner, are:
Mistake 1: The “either/or” approach
Unbalanced organizational structures result in delays, gaps in performance, and confusion about responsibility. This often stems from a binary choice between centralized and decentralized models. Such an approach limits design possibilities and can lead to organizational power struggles, with teams feeling overwhelmed and misaligned.
Successful CSCOs recognize balance as a critical outcome. They employ both integration (combining activities under one team structure) and differentiation (empowering multiple units to conduct activities in unique ways). This granular approach ensures that decisions, expertise, and resources are allocated optimally to serve diverse customer needs while maintaining internally coherent operating models.
Mistake 2: Debilitating headcount reduction
Reducing headcount as a primary goal of reorganization can undermine long-term organizational capability. This approach often leads to a focus on short-term cost savings at the expense of losing critical talent and expertise, which are essential for driving future success.
Instead, CSCOs should focus on understanding what capabilities will make the organization strong in the short, medium, and long term. They should also prioritize the development and leveraging of people capabilities, social networks, and autonomy. This approach not only enhances organizational effectiveness but also ensures that the organization is ready to meet future challenges.
Mistake 3: The copy/paste approach
Copying organizational designs from other companies without considering enterprise-specific variations can slow decision-making and hinder organizational effectiveness. Each organization has unique characteristics that must be factored into its design.
CSCOs who successfully redesign their organizations make speed an explicit outcome by assigning and clarifying authority and expertise to remove elements that slow decision-making speed. This involves:
Designing structures that enable rapid response to customer needs;
Streamlining internal decision-making processes;
And differentiating between operational execution and transformation efforts.
The research for the report was based in part on qualitative interviews conducted between February and June 2024 with supply chain leaders from organizations that had undergone organizational redesign, according to Gartner. Insights were drawn from those who had successfully completed a radical reorganization, defined as a shift that enabled organizations to deliver on new activities and operating models that better met the needs of the business. The researchers also drew on more than 1,200 inquiries with clients conducted between July 2022 and June 2024 for the report.
Like seaports everywhere, California’s Port of Oakland has long been planning for the impacts of rising sea levels caused by climate change. After all, as King Canute of medieval legend proved, no one has the power to hold back the tides.
But in Oakland’s case, port leaders have been looking beyond the hard-edged urban breakwater structures normally used for calming waves and rising waters. Instead, for the past five years, the port has been testing an artificial “island” that it describes as a prototype for an “ecologically productive” floating breakwater.
Known as the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab—or “Float Lab” for short—the island measures 10 by 15 feet and consists of a fiber-reinforced polymer structure. Float Lab arrived in Oakland in August 2019 and was installed in the port’s shallow water habitat adjacent to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.
Float Lab has now been moved from the Port of Oakland to the San Francisco Bay, where it will be anchored near Treasure Island, which is appropriately enough an artificial island itself. There, it will continue to host research efforts as ports keep a watchful eye on the changing climate.
When it comes to the challenges facing the trucking industry, the standard litany goes something like this: driver turnover, diesel prices … and freight scams.
Freight scams have always been there, of course. Thieves will naturally flock to a sector that handles 80,000-pound loads of merchandise conveniently packed into 18-wheelers that are sometimes left alone in a freight yard for the weekend or parked overnight along a lonely stretch of highway.
But the problem is getting worse, experts say. That’s partly because of the rise of the internet, where thieves can use keystrokes—rather than brute force—to divert freight. It has also opened the door to hackers, who can exploit human error to gain access to sensitive information—information they can then use to cripple a company’s networks or hold its databases for ransom.
Another factor in the upsurge of cargo scams is the increasing technological sophistication of the trucking industry. A few years ago, freight brokers spent their days phoning or emailing contacts they found on loadboards to book truck space—a process that was slow, but secure. Today, nearly anyone can book trucking capacity instantly through a digital freight matching (DFM) platform or smartphone app. While that approach is faster and more efficient, it also leaves users more vulnerable to online scammers.
“The biggest threat to the trucking industry isn’t from roads traveled or soft markets, but from cyberspace,” Joe Ohr, chief operating officer for the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA), said in a recent release. “With rapid tech adoption, vulnerabilities are growing,” he added, noting that today, one in four cybersecurity attacks target the transport and distribution industries. “It’s crucial for carriers, shippers, and 3PLs [third-party logistics service providers] to prioritize efficient and effective cybersecurity measures to mitigate these risks,” Ohr said.
According to the NMFTA, companies hit by recent cyberattacks include some of the biggest names in the business: Ward Transport & Logistics Corp., Bison Transport, Estes Express Lines, Forward Air Corp., Marten Transport, the Port of Los Angeles, and the Port of Seattle. The full list is almost certainly longer, but many victims do not disclose the breaches out of fear of damaging their reputations or inviting follow-on attempts.
BUILDING CYBERSHIELDS
With cyberattacks on the rise and billions of dollars at stake, the industry is fighting back.
For an example of that, you need look no further than the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), the research arm of the American Trucking Associations. Noting that cargo theft is “a common and growing problem,” ATRI voted earlier this year to prioritize research on what it termed the “cargo theft crisis.” Theft has evolved from thieves simply stealing cargo to using sophisticated impersonation schemes, the group said, adding that FBI statistics indicate losses from cargo theft amount to $15 billion to $30 billion annually.
But collecting data for the study won’t be easy. Many industry stakeholders are hesitant to publicly provide cargo theft data, the group said. To encourage participation, ATRI designed its survey with confidentiality in mind—even offering to sign a confidentiality agreement if needed. The aim of the study, which was launched in August, is to determine the scope of the cargo theft problem and to identify successful counterstrategies used by both motor carriers and freight brokers.
“Cargo theft is a pervasive issue that won’t go away without a collaborative effort,” Ben Banks, an ATRI member and vice president of Nashville, Tennessee-based truckload and logistics service provider TCW, said in a release. “With accurate cargo theft data, our industry will be able to quantify the issue and work more effectively with law enforcement and commercial insurance to combat this costly problem.”
As the threat grows, government agencies are doing their bit to protect industry players as well. For instance, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently issued an alert to truckers advising them of a phishing scam. In the notice, the FMCSA warned that hackers had been posing as FMCSA agents and sending spoofed emails to registered freight entities. These emails direct recipients to fill out forms asking for personally identifiable information, such as their social security or driver’s license number, or the carrier’s USDOT PIN, which could be used to gain access to its FMCSA account, according to the bulletin. It went on to note that the agency does not require such information on official FMCSA forms and that legitimate information requests would direct users to log into their FMCSA portal accounts.
HIGH-TECH WEAPONS FOR HIGH-TECH THREATS
Technology firms are also building up their cyberdefense arsenals, developing increasingly sophisticated tools to help their customers detect scams. Here are three examples:
Loadboard operator Truckstop in September introduced a “Risk Assessment System” to guard against increasingly dynamic and digitally driven freight fraud. “Fraud in the freight industry evolves daily at a breakneck pace,” Julia Laurin, chief product officer at Truckstop, said in a release. “We are launching the Risk Assessment System to give our customers and network participants another practical tool that breaks the tension of protecting their business … . The solution leverages real-time data from Truckstop’s ecosystem to provide a proprietary view of fraud and business risks, using innovative technology to detect emerging fraud signals.”
In October, freight-tracking technology provider Trucker Tools introduced its “Fraud Toolkit,” a suite of fraud identification features designed to help freight brokers protect their operations against increasingly sophisticated threats.
“The freight industry is facing unprecedented challenges from bad actors who are constantly evolving their tactics,” Trucker Tools CEO Kendra Tucker said in a release. “With the rise in sophisticated fraudulent activities, freight brokers need tools to identify fraud quickly. We know that double brokering alone claims $500 million [to] $700 million from carriers and brokers annually. Our fraud identification tools help our customers combat this.”
This summer, transportation management software (TMS) developer Transport Pro announced that it had teamed up with Tive, a real-time logistics visibility service, to provide shipment tracking and monitoring in real time. Under the arrangement, Tive trackers are placed directly onto the cargo in a trailer, enabling Tive to monitor the cargo’s whereabouts at all times. Freight brokers can get real-time updates by checking their Transport Pro dashboard.
“Fraud and cargo theft have been a hot topic for the past few years. Freight tech providers have some great tools for vetting carriers, but there are still a lot of bad actors slipping through the cracks,” Kenneth Kloeppel, president and founder of Transport Pro, said in a release. “Fundamentally, tracking the actual cargo with a hardware device is the only way to keep an eye on the shipment.”
NO MAGIC BULLET
Freight fraud defense tools and widescale industry initiatives can take a big bite out of crime. But complete cyber-resilience may be nearly impossible to achieve, according to LevelBlue, a security service provider formerly known as AT&T Cybersecurity. That’s partly because the transportation industry is struggling to balance technological innovation with computer security: A recent report from the company shows that 73% of transportation respondents say the opportunity of dynamic computing innovation outweighs the corresponding increase in cybersecurity risk. And only 53% of transportation executives say that cybersecurity is included in their broader corporate strategy discussions.
But the C-suite may be forced to rectify the situation. “As digital innovation takes center stage, cyber-resilience will be crucial to earning and upholding stakeholder trust, “ said Theresa Lanowitz, chief evangelist of LevelBlue, in a release. And stakeholder pressure to step up security would be difficult to ignore.
In the interim, there are plenty of steps companies can take to mitigate the risks and keep cybercriminals at bay. And they won’t have to do it alone: Judging from the recent announcements, government agencies, industry associations, and tech developers all stand ready to help.
The number of shipments of mobile robots will rise from 547,000 units in 2023 to 2.79 million by 2030, as customers expand applications from the current typical use case in warehousing and logistics to new tasks in manufacturing, last-mile delivery, agriculture, and healthcare, according to a report from technology analyst firm ABI.
That steep expansion would add up to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.1% by units, and CAGR of 23.6% by revenue, as sales are forecasted to rise from $18 billion to $124 billion by 2030.
“Mobile robots are a very valuable category of robot which have completely transformed warehousing and logistics in recent years,” George Chowdhury, Robotics Industry Analyst at ABI Research, said in a release. “For material handling alone, mobile robots offer enterprises transformative efficiency improvements. Driven by the evolution of supporting technologies such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), mobile robots can be deployed in diverse and dynamic environments, presenting new horizons to stakeholders and bringing efficiency improvements to under-automated economic sectors such as agriculture and healthcare.”
While warehousing and logistics will remain the primary adopters, other market verticals will see accelerated uptake by the decade's end, the report said. Shipments catering for agriculture deployments will rise from 7,000 to 129,000 per year by 2030; shipments for delivery will grow from 14,000 to 147,000; and public-facing applications will increase as the use of mobile robots within restaurants progress from 6,000 in 2023 to 78,000 shipments in 2030.
According to ABI, that change will occur as other industries begin to benefit from the decreasing costs, greater versatility, and simplified programmability that vendors are bringing to the mobile robot market. Sorted by market, those vendors include MiR, Omron, Otto Motors, and ABB for intralogistics within manufacturing; companies such as Zebra, Locus, and Safelog for marketing; Simbe and Brain Corp for retail; and Starship for last-mile delivery market.
“Mobile robots will remain the most popular form of robot, and shipments will continue to increase across economies as the benefits of augmenting existing business practices with automation become clear to decision-makers,” Chowdhury said. “As trust in Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) technologies grows, we will increasingly see mobile robots in public spaces. Hospitals, agriculture, retail stores, and last-mile delivery are all nearing readiness for the mass adoption of mobile robots.”
The launch is based on “Amazon Nova,” the company’s new generation of foundation models, the company said in a blog post. Data scientists use foundation models (FMs) to develop machine learning (ML) platforms more quickly than starting from scratch, allowing them to create artificial intelligence applications capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks, since they were trained on a broad spectrum of generalized data, Amazon says.
The new models are integrated with Amazon Bedrock, a managed service that makes FMs from AI companies and Amazon available for use through a single API. Using Amazon Bedrock, customers can experiment with and evaluate Amazon Nova models, as well as other FMs, to determine the best model for an application.
Calling the launch “the next step in our AI journey,” the company says Amazon Nova has the ability to process text, image, and video as prompts, so customers can use Amazon Nova-powered generative AI applications to understand videos, charts, and documents, or to generate videos and other multimedia content.
“Inside Amazon, we have about 1,000 Gen AI applications in motion, and we’ve had a bird’s-eye view of what application builders are still grappling with,” Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence, said in a release. “Our new Amazon Nova models are intended to help with these challenges for internal and external builders, and provide compelling intelligence and content generation while also delivering meaningful progress on latency, cost-effectiveness, customization, information grounding, and agentic capabilities.”
The new Amazon Nova models available in Amazon Bedrock include:
Amazon Nova Micro, a text-only model that delivers the lowest latency responses at very low cost.
Amazon Nova Lite, a very low-cost multimodal model that is lightning fast for processing image, video, and text inputs.
Amazon Nova Pro, a highly capable multimodal model with the best combination of accuracy, speed, and cost for a wide range of tasks.
Amazon Nova Premier, the most capable of Amazon’s multimodal models for complex reasoning tasks and for use as the best teacher for distilling custom models
Amazon Nova Canvas, a state-of-the-art image generation model.
Amazon Nova Reel, a state-of-the-art video generation model that can transform a single image input into a brief video with the prompt: dolly forward.