"nothing is as fast as the speed of trust": interview with Stephen M.R. Covey
We may live in a hyper-networked digital age, says Stephen M.R. Covey. But the secret to swift, efficient business transactions is something distinctly old fashioned: trust.
Mitch Mac Donald has more than 30 years of experience in both the newspaper and magazine businesses. He has covered the logistics and supply chain fields since 1988. Twice named one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the U.S., he has served in a multitude of editorial and publishing roles. The leading force behind the launch of Supply Chain Management Review, he was that brand's founding publisher and editorial director from 1997 to 2000. Additionally, he has served as news editor, chief editor, publisher and editorial director of Logistics Management, as well as publisher of Modern Materials Handling. Mitch is also the president and CEO of Agile Business Media, LLC, the parent company of DC VELOCITY and CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly.
Ask around among business executives about ways to streamline operations, and they'll likely bring up automation, outsourcing, or perhaps business process reviews. But few, if any,will mention "trust building." Stephen M.R. Covey would like to change that. Covey, author of the 2006 breakthrough book The Speed of Trust, has been out on the lecture circuit for the past couple of years talking about the often-overlooked power of trust. Without exception, says Covey, doing business is faster (and cheaper) when the parties trust one another.
If you consider the time and cost of, say, post-9/11 airport security or post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, you'll immediately see Covey's point. But he argues that it's equally true of routine business transactions. If trust levels are low, he contends, people end up verifying, validating, checking, fact finding, and questioning— all of which takes time and costs money. By contrast, he says, "when trust goes up in the relationship …, speed goes up. Everything can happen faster. Cost comes down."
A Harvard M.B.A., Covey is the co-founder and CEO of the training and consulting firm CoveyLink Worldwide. Along with speaking to audiences around the world on trust, leadership, ethics, and high performance, he consults to Fortune 500 companies as well as with small and mid-sized private sector and public sector organizations. As a consultant, he draws on his experiences as president and CEO of the Covey Leadership Center, where he personally oversaw the strategy that made a business best seller out of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a book written by his father, Dr. Stephen R. Covey. Under the younger Covey's stewardship, the Covey Leadership Center became the largest leadership development company in the world. The company was valued at only $2.4 million when Covey was named CEO; within three years, he grew shareholder value to $160 million in a merger he orchestrated with Franklin Quest to form FranklinCovey.
A few weeks before he was due to deliver the keynote address at the Warehousing Education and Research Council's annual conference, Covey spoke with DC VELOCITY Group Editorial Director Mitch Mac Donald about trust and why trust building is particularly important to today's supply chain managers.
Q: When you take the stage as the keynote speaker at next month's annual conference of the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC), what message do you plan to deliver?
A: The core message will be the premise of my book, The Speed of Trust. The whole idea will be to take this topic—trust—which is often seen as a soft, nice-to-have social virtue, and show how trust is a hard-edged economic business driver. Trust always affects speed and cost, and you can measure speed and cost.
The second key idea—and one that's particularly likely to resonate with the executives attending the WERC conference— is the importance of establishing and building relationships of trust in today's economy, where technology and globalization are changing everything. The upsurge in border crossings and the use of multiple technologies have put a greater premium on the need for trust than ever before. Logistics, by default, requires partnering, collaboration, interdependence, and teaming. Those things drive or die based upon the presence or absence of trust.
The third part of my message will be that you can do something about this. You can actually get good at creating trust and establishing it and growing it and extending it and even, where needed, restoring it. You can turn trust into a strength as well as a competence. It's not something you either lament that you don't have or just feel grateful that you do. Instead, you make it a competency. It's something you can learn and get good at.
Simply put, trust is the critical competency of leadership needed today in this network-centric economy.
Q: So how do you go about building trust in the supply chain?
A: First of all, you can't just say "we've got to build trust" and leave it at that. Trust has to become a core part of who you are as a person, as a leader, and as a company, and of the way that you operate. It's really a process that works from the inside out, beginning with yourself and extending on out from there. You have to ask yourself and your team: Do we give others a sense that they can trust us, our team, our process? Once you're satisfied that you've reached that level of trustworthiness, you are now truly positioned to build and sustain trust in external partnering relationships at a different kind of level. You can't skip that and go straight to the external partner; it works far better when it's from the inside out. You are modeling this. Your own team sees it. They build that trust inside as well. That helps them sustain it as you go down the line and get into these broader supply chains.
External relationships are becoming increasingly vital today. It has always been important, but today, it's even more so because of the way work is being done and this whole network-centric approach. It requires a far greater degree of real partnering and collaboration. You cannot partner without trust. You can't really collaborate without trust. You might cooperate or you might coordinate if there is no trust, but real collaboration and partnering requires a level of trust and understanding that will extend to everything else once you have established that. It's important that we build relationships of trust so that we can repeat actions again and again and again, faster and faster, as opposed to delivering the result this time, but doing it in a way that is diminishing the trust. Otherwise, the next time we go to deliver, it becomes a little bit harder. It takes us a little bit longer because the trust has gone down from our prior actions. So, it is really a whole new approach—one that requires us to acknowledge that building trust is a priority and not just an afterthought.
Q: Now as trust relates to speed, are you saying it is simply easier to execute business decisions swiftly and repeat steps when you're dealing with a partner you trust?
A: Absolutely. When trust goes down in any relationship, on a team, in a company, or in a supply chain, speed will also go down. Everything will take longer to do and cost will go up. Everything will cost you more to do because you have to verify, validate, check, fact find, and so on. You are wondering. You are questioning. All of which takes time and costs money. I call that a low-trust tax.
By contrast, when trust goes up in the relationship, on a team, in a company, or in a supply chain, speed goes up. Everything can happen faster. Cost comes down. Everything costs you less. That is the high-trust dividend. It is really that simple and that predictable. Those are the economics of trust.
We have often thought just the opposite—that trust takes a lot of time to build and slows down the process. I am here to say that once you understand what trust is and how it is established, you can grow far faster than you might think possible. Second, once you have established the trust, nothing is as fast as the speed of trust. You can operate and move at an incredible speed that you can't come close to approximating when the trust has gone down. That is what I mean by the speed of trust. It truly is an economic force.
Q: When you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense. Still, isn't trust something that has to be earned and cultivated over time?
A: I acknowledge that it can take time. You can't artificially force it or mandate it because it's something that people have to give because they choose to give or because it has been earned. What I have learned in all of my work with organizations, leaders, and industries, though, is that you can prioritize the creation of trust. You make it an explicit objective as job one. If we can build a relationship of trust, everything will be better for all of us. Everything will happen faster and will cost us less, and it will create greater value.
In other words, there is no hidden reason for why we are doing this. We want to build relationships with trust not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's the economic thing to do. So you become explicit about it. You say things like, establishing a relationship of trust is so vital for all the reasons we discussed. You need to know something about me and about us. If we make you a commitment, you can count on us to deliver on the commitment or else we won't make it. You can be assured that if we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it. When you do that, you take some risks because you raise the ante, but you also accelerate the establishment of trust. People now know what to look for. When they see it, they recognize it. You are held a little bit more accountable, but you also accelerate the creation of trust.
Part of the process is helping people understand what behaviors help build trust. We have identified 13 behaviors that are common to high-trust people, hightrust leaders, and high-trust supply chains. People should behave and act in certain ways. They avoid the opposite behaviors, or the counterfeits. For example, one of the behaviors is to talk straight. The opposite is to lie. That obviously destroys trust. The counterfeit looks like the real deal, but it is really not. This is when people spin, posture, position. They technically tell the truth, but they leave the wrong impression. On paper it might look like they are being real, but they are not. Everyone kind of senses it and knows it and that diminishes the trust. Other behaviors that build trust include creating transparency as opposed to obscuring or covering. If you make a mistake, you right the wrong as opposed to denying the wrong or worse, covering it up. Keeping commitments as opposed to breaking the commitment or to counterfeit, which is when people over-promise and then under-deliver. These are just a few of the 13 behaviors. When people become aware of them and focus on them, when they get deliberate and explicit about it, you actually can build trust far faster than you might think possible. You can build it fast, and once you have established it, everything moves at an exceptional speed.
Q: So you're saying that being open and honest is more than a matter of simple decency; it also has economic benefits, correct?
A: Exactly. There is a convergence between the right thing to do and the economic thing to do. At one level, as you are suggesting, they are common sense. They are human values. They are values that cross cultures. They are principles and they are basic. So at that level you say, well this is not so revolutionary. But maybe what is revolutionary is the recognition, the awareness that, in fact, it is not just the right thing to do, it's the economic thing to do because it increases speed and decreases cost.
If it were so easy, we would all be doing it. And the fact that it's fundamental doesn't make it easy. We are all about trying to make these behaviors common. Whereas I would argue in most corporations, in most corporate cultures, in most supply chains even, the prevailing culture is counterfeit behavior. People are blaming instead of taking responsibility. They are covering up a little bit, and they are spinning instead of talking straight. They are operating with hidden agendas instead of being transparent.
Q: Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to share?
A: Let me add that I'm not advocating blind trust, where you just go out and trust anybody and everybody because that doesn't work. That is not smart. That's being gullible and people will get burnt. At the same time, I'm certainly not advocating taking it to the opposite extreme and not trusting anybody. Neither extreme is sustainable in the long run without huge economic consequences.
Instead, I am advocating a third alternative—what I call "smart trust." You have an inclination and a desire to trust, but you are also smart about it. You bring your analytical skills to bear to assess the particular situation, the risk involved, and the credibility of the people involved. In some cases, you may trust conditionally because the risk is very high and you're just learning the players involved. In other cases, you're going to trust far more abundantly because you've already built that relationship. You've established it. You go faster.
The notion of "smart trust" is captured nicely in the expression "trust and verify." The sequencing is important. The sequencing is trust as your starting place. Then you add to that verification. Too often, we go with the opposite sequence, where we say verify, then—and only then—trust. There's a danger in that approach. Even though it might look like it's safer because it's important to verify, when that is our starting place, we tend to view the world with suspicious lenses and people tend to reciprocate. When we distrust to begin with, they tend to distrust back. We can get into a vicious downward cycle of distrust and suspicion. I'm not saying to lose the analysis. I'm just saying suspend it for a moment. Begin with the propensity to trust. Then, with that in place, add to that your analysis of the situation. That will make you a better judge of when and how to trust.
The former CEO of Johnson & Johnson, Jim Burke, has said, "I have found that by trusting people until they prove themselves unworthy of that trust, a lot more happens." This is all about judgment. When you recognize the economics of trust, you're more inclined to build trust, establish trust, grow trust. You're also more inclined to learn how and when to extend trust in the supply chain. What an edge that is.
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in January, growing at its fastest clip in more than two years, according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI) report, released this week.
The LMI jumped nearly five points from December to a reading of 62, reflecting continued steady growth in the U.S. economy along with faster-than-expected inventory growth across the sector as retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers attempted to manage the uncertainty of tariffs and a changing regulatory environment. The January reading represented the fastest rate of expansion since June 2022, the LMI researchers said.
An LMI reading above 50 indicates growth across warehousing and transportation markets, and a reading below 50 indicates contraction. The LMI has remained in the mid- to high 50s range for most of the past year, indicating moderate, consistent growth in logistics markets.
Inventory levels rose 8.5 points from December, driven by downstream retailers stocking up ahead of the Trump administration’s potential tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China. Those increases led to higher costs throughout the industry: inventory costs, warehousing prices, and transportation prices all expanded to readings above 70, indicating strong growth. This occurred alongside slowing growth in warehousing and transportation capacity, suggesting that prices are up due to demand rather than other factors, such as inflation, according to the LMI researchers.
The LMI is a monthly survey of logistics managers from across the country. It tracks industry growth overall and across eight areas: inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity, utilization, and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices. The report is released monthly by researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).
As commodities go, furniture presents its share of manufacturing and distribution challenges. For one thing, it's bulky. Second, its main components—wood and cloth—are easily damaged in transit. Third, much of it is manufactured overseas, making for some very long supply chains with all the associated risks. And finally, completed pieces can sit on the showroom floor for weeks or months, tying up inventory dollars and valuable retail space.
In other words, the furniture market is ripe for disruption. And John "Jay" Rogers wants to be the catalyst. In 2022, he cofounded a company that takes a whole new approach to furniture manufacturing—one that leverages the power of 3D printing and robotics. Rogers serves as CEO of that company, Haddy, which essentially aims to transform how furniture—and all elements of the "built environment"—are designed, manufactured, distributed, and, ultimately, recycled.
Rogers graduated from Princeton University and went to work for a medical device startup in China before moving to a hedge fund company, where he became a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). After that, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving eight years in the infantry. Following two combat tours, he earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School and became a consultant for McKinsey & Co.
During this time, he founded Local Motors, a next-generation vehicle manufacturer that launched the world's first 3D-printed car, the Strati, in 2014. In 2021, he brought the technology to the furniture industry to launch Haddy. The father of four boys, Rogers is also a director of the RBR Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on education and health care.
Rogers spoke recently with DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney on an episode of the "Logistics Matters" podcast.
Q: Could you tell us about Haddy and how this unique company came to be?
A: Absolutely. We have believed in the future of distributed digital manufacturing for a long time. The world has gone from being heavily globalized to one where lengthy supply chains are a liability—thanks to factors like the growing risk of terrorist attacks and the threat of tariffs. At the same time, there are more capabilities to produce things locally. Haddy is an outgrowth of those general trends.
Adoption of the technologies used in 3D printing has been decidedly uneven, although we do hear about applications like tissue bioprinting and food printing as well as the printing of trays for dental aligners. At Haddy, we saw an opportunity to take advantage of large-scale structural printing to approach the furniture and furnishings industry. The technology and software that make this possible are already here.
Q: Furniture is a very mature market. Why did you see this as a market that was ripe for disruption?
A:The furniture market has actually been disrupted many times in the last 200 years. The manufacturing of furniture for U.S. consumption originally took place in England. It then moved to Boston and from there to New Amsterdam, the Midwest, and North Carolina. Eventually, it went to Taiwan, then China, and now Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. And each of those moves brought some type of disruption.
Other disruptions have been based on design. You can look at things like the advent of glue-laminated wood with Herman Miller, MillerKnoll, and the Eames [furniture design and manufacturing] movement. And you can look at changes in the way manufacturing is powered—the move from manual operations to machine-driven operations powered by steam and electricity. So the furniture industry has been continuously disrupted, sometimes by labor markets and sometimes by machines and methods.
What's happening now is that we're seeing changes in the way that labor is applied in furniture manufacturing. Furniture has traditionally been put together by human hands. But today, we have an opportunity to reassign those hands to processes that take place around the edges of furniture production. The hands are now directing robotics through programming and design; they're not actually making the furniture.
And so, we see this mature market as being one that's been continuously disrupted during the last 200 years. And this disruption now has a lot to do with changing the way that labor interacts with the making of furniture.
Q: How do your 3D printers actually create the furniture?
A:All 3D printing is not the same. The 3D printers we use are so-called "hybrid" systems. When we say hybrid, what we mean is that they're not just printers—they are holders, printers, polishers, and cutters, and they also do milling and things like that. We measure things and then print things, which is the additive portion. Then we can do subtractive and polishing work—re-measuring, moving, and printing parts again. And so, these hybrid systems are the actual makers of the furniture.
Q: What types of products are you making?
A: We've started with hardline or case goods, as they're sometimes known, for both residential and commercial use—cabinets, wall bookshelves, freestanding bookshelves, tables, rigid chairs, planters, and the like. Basically, we've been concentrating on products that don't have upholstery.
It's not that upholstery isn't necessary in furniture, as it is used in many pieces. But right now, we have found that digital furniture manufacturing becomes analog again when you have to factor in the sewing process. And so, to move quickly and fully leverage the advantages of digital manufacturing, we're sticking to the hardline groups, except for a couple of pieces that we have debuted that have 3D-printed cushions, which are super cool.
Q: Of course, 3D printers create objects in layers. What types of materials are you running through your 3D printers to create this furniture?
A: We use recycled materials, primarily polymer composites—a bio-compostable polymer or a synthetic polymer. We look for either recycled or bio-compostable [materials], which we then reinforce with fibers and fillers, and that's what makes them composites. To create the bio-compostables, we marry them with bio-fibers, such as hemp or bamboo. For synthetic materials, we marry them with things like glass or carbon fibers.
Q: Does producing goods via 3D printing allow you to customize products easily?
A: Absolutely. The real problem in the furniture and furnishings industries is that when you tool up to make something with a jig, a fixture, or a mold, you tend to be less creative because you now feel you have to make and sell a lot of that item to justify the investment.
One of the great promises of 3D printing is that it doesn't have a mold and doesn't require tooling. It exists in the digital realm before it becomes physical, and so customization is part and parcel of the process.
I would also add that people aren't necessarily looking for one-off furniture. Just because we can customize doesn't mean we're telling customers that once we've delivered a product, we break the digital mold, so to speak. We still feel that people like styles and trends created by designers, but the customization really allows enterprise clients—like businesses, retailers, and architects—to think more freely.
Customization is most useful in allowing people to "iterate" quickly. Our designers can do something digitally first without having to build a tool, which frees them to be more creative. Plus, because our material is fully recyclable, if we print something for the first time and find it doesn't work, we can just recycle it. So there's really no penalty for a failed first printing—in fact, those failures bring their own rewards in the form of lessons we can apply in future digital and physical iterations.
Q: You currently produce your furniture in an automated microfactory in Florida, with plans to set up several more. Could you talk a little about what your microfactory looks like and how you distribute the finished goods?
A: Our microfactory is a 30,000-square-foot box that mainly contains the robots that make our furniture along with shipping docks. But we don't intend for our microfactories to be storage warehouses and trans-shipment facilities like the kind you'd typically see in the furniture industry—all of the trappings of a global supply chain. Instead, a microfactory is meant to be a site where you print the product, put it on a dock, and then ship it out. So a microfactory is essentially an enabler of regional manufacturing and distribution.
Q: Do you manufacture your products on a print-to-order basis as opposed to a print-to-stock model?
A: No. We may someday get to the point where we receive an order digitally, print it, and then send it out on a truck the next day. But right now, we aren't set up to do a mini-delivery to one customer out of a microfactory.
We are an enterprise company that partners with architects, designers, builders, and retailers, who then distribute our furnishings to their customers. We are not trying to go direct-to-consumer at this stage. It's not the way a microfactory is set up to distribute goods.
Q: You've mentioned your company's use of recycled materials. Could you talk a little bit about other ways you're looking to reduce waste and help support a circular economy?
A: Yes. Sustainability and a circular economy are really something that you have to plan for. In our case, our plans call for moving toward a distributed digital manufacturing model, where we establish microfactories in various regions around the world to serve customers within a 10-hour driving radius of the factory. That is a pretty large area, so we could cover the United States with just four or five microfactories.
That also means that we can credibly build our recycling network as part of our microfactory setup. As I mentioned, we use recycled polymer stock in our production, so we're keeping that material out of a landfill. And then we tell our enterprise customers that while the furniture they're buying is extremely durable, when they're ready to run a special and offer customers a credit for turning in their used furniture, we'll buy back the material. Buying back that material actually reduces our costs because it's already been composited and created and recaptured. So our microfactory network is well designed for circularity in concert with our enterprise customers.
Generative AI (GenAI) is being deployed by 72% of supply chain organizations, but most are experiencing just middling results for productivity and ROI, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.
That’s because productivity gains from the use of GenAI for individual, desk-based workers are not translating to greater team-level productivity. Additionally, the deployment of GenAI tools is increasing anxiety among many employees, providing a dampening effect on their productivity, Gartner found.
To solve those problems, chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) deploying GenAI need to shift from a sole focus on efficiency to a strategy that incorporates full organizational productivity. This strategy must better incorporate frontline workers, assuage growing employee anxieties from the use of GenAI tools, and focus on use-cases that promote creativity and innovation, rather than only on saving time.
"Early GenAI deployments within supply chain reveal a productivity paradox," Sam Berndt, Senior Director in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in the report. "While its use has enhanced individual productivity for desk-based roles, these gains are not cascading through the rest of the function and are actually making the overall working environment worse for many employees. CSCOs need to retool their deployment strategies to address these negative outcomes.”
As part of the research, Gartner surveyed 265 global respondents in August 2024 to assess the impact of GenAI in supply chain organizations. In addition to the survey, Gartner conducted 75 qualitative interviews with supply chain leaders to gain deeper insights into the deployment and impact of GenAI on productivity, ROI, and employee experience, focusing on both desk-based and frontline workers.
Gartner’s data showed an increase in productivity from GenAI for desk-based workers, with GenAI tools saving 4.11 hours of time weekly for these employees. The time saved also correlated to increased output and higher quality work. However, these gains decreased when assessing team-level productivity. The amount of time saved declined to 1.5 hours per team member weekly, and there was no correlation to either improved output or higher quality of work.
Additional negative organizational impacts of GenAI deployments include:
Frontline workers have failed to make similar productivity gains as their desk-based counterparts, despite recording a similar amount of time savings from the use of GenAI tools.
Employees report higher levels of anxiety as they are exposed to a growing number of GenAI tools at work, with the average supply chain employee now utilizing 3.6 GenAI tools on average.
Higher anxiety among employees correlates to lower levels of overall productivity.
“In their pursuit of efficiency and time savings, CSCOs may be inadvertently creating a productivity ‘doom loop,’ whereby they continuously pilot new GenAI tools, increasing employee anxiety, which leads to lower levels of productivity,” said Berndt. “Rather than introducing even more GenAI tools into the work environment, CSCOs need to reexamine their overall strategy.”
According to Gartner, three ways to better boost organizational productivity through GenAI are: find creativity-based GenAI use cases to unlock benefits beyond mere time savings; train employees how to make use of the time they are saving from the use GenAI tools; and shift the focus from measuring automation to measuring innovation.
According to Arvato, it made the move in order to better serve the U.S. e-commerce sector, which has experienced high growth rates in recent years and is expected to grow year-on-year by 5% within the next five years.
The two acquisitions follow Arvato’s purchase three months ago of ATC Computer Transport & Logistics, an Irish firm that specializes in high-security transport and technical services in the data center industry. Following the latest deals, Arvato will have a total U.S. network of 16 warehouses with about seven million square feet of space.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Carbel is a Florida-based 3PL with a strong focus on fashion and retail. It offers custom warehousing, distribution, storage, and transportation services, operating out of six facilities in the U.S., with a footprint of 1.6 million square feet of warehouse space in Florida (2), Pennsylvania (2), California, and New York.
Florida-based United Customs Services offers import and export solutions, specializing in remote location filing across the U.S., customs clearance, and trade compliance. CTPAT-certified since 2007, United Customs Services says it is known for simplifying global trade processes that help streamline operations for clients in international markets.
“With deep expertise in retail and apparel logistics services, Carbel and United Customs Services are the perfect partners to strengthen our ability to provide even more tailored solutions to our clients. Our combined knowledge and our joint commitment to excellence will drive our growth within the US and open new opportunities,” Arvato CEO Frank Schirrmeister said in a release.
And many of them will have a budget to do it, since 51% of supply chain professionals with existing innovation budgets saw an increase earmarked for 2025, suggesting an even greater emphasis on investing in new technologies to meet rising demand, Kenco said in its “2025 Supply Chain Innovation” survey.
One of the biggest targets for innovation spending will artificial intelligence, as supply chain leaders look to use AI to automate time-consuming tasks. The survey showed that 41% are making AI a key part of their innovation strategy, with a third already leveraging it for data visibility, 29% for quality control, and 26% for labor optimization.
Still, lingering concerns around how to effectively and securely implement AI are leading some companies to sidestep the technology altogether. More than a third – 35% – said they’re largely prevented from using AI because of company policy, leaving an opportunity to streamline operations on the table.
“Avoiding AI entirely is no longer an option. Implementing it strategically can give supply chain-focused companies a serious competitive advantage,” Kristi Montgomery, Vice President, Innovation, Research & Development at Kenco, said in a release. “Now’s the time for organizations to explore and experiment with the tech, especially for automating data-heavy operations such as demand planning, shipping, and receiving to optimize your operations and unlock true efficiency.”
Among the survey’s other top findings:
there was essentially three-way tie for which physical automation tools professionals are looking to adopt in the coming year: robotics (43%), sensors and automatic identification (40%), and 3D printing (40%).
professionals tend to select a proven developer for providing supply chain innovation, but many also pick start-ups. Forty-five percent said they work with a mix of new and established developers, compared to 39% who work with established technologies only.
there’s room to grow in partnering with 3PLs for innovation: only 13% said their 3PL identified a need for innovation, and just 8% partnered with a 3PL to bring a technology to life.