David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
The Problem: Golf cart maker Club Car needed warehousing software and it needed it fast.
Last May, the company decided to end its relationship with a 3PL and bring its receiving, staging, and sequencing functions back in house. It found a suitable warehouse for lease about 15 miles from its manufacturing plant in Augusta, Ga., but that left the question of what warehouse management software (WMS) it would use to run the operation.
The Players
Customer: Club Car (a division of Ingersoll Rand) Primary business: Manufacturing golf carts, utility carts, and other electric vehicles Headquarters: Augusta, Ga.
What Club Car needed was an application that not only offered receiving, staging, and sequencing functionality but could also be integrated with its Oracle enterprise resource planning, manufacturing planning, and financial systems. And with a September start date for the new arrangement looming, the software had to be something Club Car could get up and running in a hurry.
The Solution: Club Car found the answer to its problem in RedPrairie's On-Demand Warehouse Management solution. As the golf cart maker saw it, the system met its needs on all counts. To begin with, the software offered the functionality Club Car was looking for. And because it's delivered on an on-demand basis, the app promised quick and easy deployment as well as hassle-free integration with Club Car's other systems.
In fact, that promise of quick and easy deployment is one of on demand's primary attractions for users. Under this business model, the user essentially "rents" an application from the vendor, which hosts the software on its own servers. The user obtains access to the application via a standard Web browser; there's no software to install or maintain, and there's no need for costly integration work. As a result, on-demand software deployments typically can be completed in a matter of weeks or even days.
In Club Car's case, deployment was as quick and easy as promised, says Tracy Vance, the company's chief information officer. "It really was perfect for us," says Vance. "And it was easy to implement quickly. That was the primary driver for us."
It also proved to be a good decision financially. With on-demand solutions, users avoid the hefty upfront costs of buying software licenses; instead, they pay relatively modest monthly or usage fees. Vance estimates that his monthly fees over five years will be about one-third of what he'd pay for a traditional warehouse management system.
As for how it's working out to date, Vance says he hasn't had any problems using the system remotely. However, he does not yet know whether this will be a long-term solution for Club Car or simply a stepping stone to something else.
"It has been a good solution for us so far and has gotten us from A to B," Vance says. "But our goal is C. Will it get us to C?"
He also admits to some concerns about what he sees as a still-unproven business model—one that forces the user to rely on someone at a remote location to ensure the system won't go down when the user needs it most.
"The most important thing for me is for it to be there when I need it," Vance says. "I will be anxious to see where they take ... this product in the future."
So far, however, the WMS appears to be making the cut. Where performance in concerned, Club Car has found the on-demand system to be on par with traditional warehouse software offerings.
Editor's note: At some point, almost everyone needs to call on outside expertise—a consultant or a product/service supplier that can bring experience with other companies to bear on your situation. That's why we're launching our new "ProblemSolved" feature this month. Each of these brief case studies highlights a logistics- or warehouse-related problem experienced by a company like yours, and explains how a supplier worked with that company to resolve it. We hope these examples will help you figure out how to make your thorniest problems history.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The U.S. manufacturing sector has become an engine of new job creation over the past four years, thanks to a combination of federal incentives and mega-trends like nearshoring and the clean energy boom, according to the industrial real estate firm Savills.
While those manufacturing announcements have softened slightly from their 2022 high point, they remain historically elevated. And the sector’s growth outlook remains strong, regardless of the results of the November U.S. presidential election, the company said in its September “Savills Manufacturing Report.”
From 2021 to 2024, over 995,000 new U.S. manufacturing jobs were announced, with two thirds in advanced sectors like electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries, semiconductors, clean energy, and biomanufacturing. After peaking at 350,000 news jobs in 2022, the growth pace has slowed, with 2024 expected to see just over half that number.
But the ingredients are in place to sustain the hot temperature of American manufacturing expansion in 2025 and beyond, the company said. According to Savills, that’s because the U.S. manufacturing revival is fueled by $910 billion in federal incentives—including the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—much of which has not yet been spent. Domestic production is also expected to be boosted by new tariffs, including a planned rise in semiconductor tariffs to 50% in 2025 and an increase in tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100%.
Certain geographical regions will see greater manufacturing growth than others, since just eight states account for 47% of new manufacturing jobs and over 6.3 billion square feet of industrial space, with 197 million more square feet under development. They are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee.
Across the border, Mexico’s manufacturing sector has also seen “revolutionary” growth driven by nearshoring strategies targeting U.S. markets and offering lower-cost labor, with a workforce that is now even cheaper than in China. Over the past four years, that country has launched 27 new plants, each creating over 500 jobs. Unlike the U.S. focus on tech manufacturing, Mexico focuses on traditional sectors such as automative parts, appliances, and consumer goods.
Looking at the future, the U.S. manufacturing sector’s growth outlook remains strong, regardless of the results of November’s presidential election, Savills said. That’s because both candidates favor protectionist trade policies, and since significant change to federal incentives would require a single party to control both the legislative and executive branches. Rather than relying on changes in political leadership, future growth of U.S. manufacturing now hinges on finding affordable, reliable power amid increasing competition between manufacturing sites and data centers, Savills said.
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.