It's like Ponce de León's fountain of youth ... only in reverse. In an unassuming warehouse in Orlando, Fla., the pallet pooler CHEP is conducting an experiment in aging. Inside the facility, pallets travel through CHEP's new Test Track, a system of conveyors, 2,800-pound weights (the recommended load limit for a CHEP pallet), and battering rams designed to age the pallets the equivalent of 10 years in just three weeks. As the pallets travel in a loop, they're subjected to impacts equivalent to what they might receive from a lift truck. The rams are even calibrated to hit a pallet in different spots.
Why turn pristine pallets into splintery wrecks? It takes some of the guesswork out of predicting how they'll stand the test of time. The company can, for example, try out different pallet "recipes" before the pallets are made available for customers' use. And it can now get answers to such questions as: How would replacing a particular 3.5-inch plank with a 5-inch plank of a higher-quality wood affect the pallet's durability?
The Test Track, an extension of CHEP's Innovation Center, is booked for the next 18 months with internal projects. CHEP hopes to eventually make the Test Track available to customers.
A coalition of truckers is applauding the latest round of $30 million in federal funding to address what they call a “national truck parking crisis,” created when drivers face an imperative to pull over and stop when they cap out their hours of service, yet can seldom find a safe spot for their vehicle.
According to the White House, a total of 44 projects were selected in this round of funding, including projects that improve safety, mobility, and economic competitiveness, constructing major bridges, expanding port capacity, and redesigning interchanges. The money is the latest in a series of large infrastructure investments that have included nearly $12.8 billion in funding through the INFRA and Mega programs for 140 projects across 42 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The money funds: 35 bridge projects, 18 port projects, 20 rail projects, and 85 highway improvement projects.
In a statement, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) said the federal funds would make a big difference in driver safety and transportation networks.
"Lack of safe truck parking has been a top concern of truckers for decades and as a truck driver, I can tell you firsthand that when truckers don’t have a safe place to park, we are put in a no-win situation. We must either continue to drive while fatigued or out of legal driving time, or park in an undesignated and unsafe location like the side of the road or abandoned lot,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a release. “It forces truck drivers to make a choice between safety and following federal Hours-of-Service rules. OOIDA and the 150,000 small business truckers we represent thank Secretary Buttigieg and the Department for their increased focus on resolving an issue that has plagued our industry for decades.”
“While there have been some signs of tightening in consumer spending, September’s numbers show consumers are willing to spend where they see value,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “September sales come amid the recent trend of payroll gains and other positive economic signs. Clearly, consumers continue to carry the economy, and conditions for the retail sector remain favorable as we move into the holiday season.”
The Census Bureau said overall retail sales in September were up 0.4% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 1.7% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 0.1% month over month and 2.2% year over year in August.
Likewise, September’s core retail sales as defined by NRF — based on the Census data but excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants — were up 0.7% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.4% unadjusted year over year. NRF is now forecasting that 2024 holiday sales will increase between 2.5% and 3.5% over the same time last year.
Despite those upward trends, consumer resilience isn’t a free pass for retailers to underinvest in their stores by overlooking labor, customer experience tech, or digital transformation, several analysts warned.
"The 2024 holiday season offers more ‘normalcy’ for retailers with inflation cooling. Still, there is no doubt that consumers continue to seek value. Promotions in general will play a larger role in the 2024 holiday season. Retailers are dealing with shrinking shopper loyalties, a larger number of competitors across more channels – and, of course, a more dynamic landscape where prices are shifting more frequently to win over consumers who are looking for great deals,” Matt Pavich, senior director of strategy & innovation at pricing optimization solutions provider Revionics, said in an email.
Nikki Baird, VP of strategy & product at retail technology company Aptos, likewise said that retailers need to keep their focus on improving their value proposition and customer experience. “Retailers aren’t just competing with other retailers when it comes to consumers’ discretionary spending. If consumers feel like the shopping experience isn’t worth their time and effort, they are going to spend their money elsewhere. A trip to Italy, a dinner out, catching the latest Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds films — there is no shortage of ways that consumers can spend their discretionary dollars,” she said.
Editor's note:This article was revised on October 18 to correct the attribution for a quote to Matt Pavich instead of Nikki Baird.
A real-time business is one that uses trusted, real-time data to enable people and systems to make real-time decisions, Peter Weill, the chairman of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), said at the “IFS Unleashed” show in Orlando.
By adopting that strategy, they gain three major capabilities, he said in a session titled “Becoming a Real-Time Business: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Digital, Data, and AI.” They are:
business model agility without needing a change management program to implement it
seamless digital customer journeys via self-service, automated, or assisted multi-product, multichannel experiences
thoughtful employee experiences enabled by technology empowered teams
And according to Weill, MIT’s studies show that adopting that real-time data stance is not restricted just to digital or tech-native businesses. Rather, it can produce successful results for companies in any sector that are able to apply the approach better than their immediate competitors.
While many companies are launching artificial intelligence (AI) products for use as generic “co-pilots” or consumer-focused gadgets, the Swedish enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor IFS says its “Industrial AI” version supports industry-specific processes in “hardcore” sectors based on assets such as power grids, cell phone networks, aircraft maintenance, elevator operation, and construction management.
“Industrial AI is at the very core the solutions we are powering for customers. They are pushing us for ready-to-use AI that they can adopt quickly to solve real industrial challenges like labor shortages, supply chain disruption, [and] stagnated productivity," IFS's Chief Customer Officer, Cathie Hall, said in a release.
In presentations at its user conference in Orlando today, known as "IFS Unleashed," the company said that its latest IFS Cloud 24R2 release supports more than 60 in-depth Industrial AI scenarios. They span generative AI examples like: content generation for training and reports; recommendations for sourcing and suppliers; and contextual knowledge for assembly instruction. The tools also include predictive AI applications like event forecasting; optimization of resources and capacity; and anomaly detection for proactive quality control.
In remarks from the keynote stage, new IFS CEO Mark Moffat—who was appointed to the top office in January—said the company may be less well known than ERP vendors such as SAP, IBM, Oracle, and Infor, but it benefits from a tighter focus on its core users. Instead of selling software across dozens of industries, IFS serves just six industries: aerospace and defense, construction and engineering, energy and utilities, manufacturing, service, and telecommunications.
Thanks to that tight approach, he said the company has earned top Gartner rankings for its software products in field service management (FSM), enterprise asset management (EAM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and enterprise service management (ESM). And to compound that advantage, Moffat said IFS continues to grow swiftly through acquisition, having bought up a handful of companies in recent months: Assyst, Ultimo, Boka, empowermx, Bolo, Tobin, Merrick, and Copperleaf.
“You need an AI business plan” Moffat told the room. “If you have an AI business plan, that’s terrific, but you can improve it. This area is just moving so fast.”
The top three corporate development priorities in consulting firm PwC’s current strategy are climate, artificial intelligence (AI), and business model reinvention (BMR), the company said in remarks today at an Orlando user conference for IFS software.
That approach meshes well with IFS, the Swedish firm which has added dozens of AI applications to its cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools in recent months, that firm said at its "IFS Unleashed" event in Orlando. And underlying the industry’s rush to AI is the growing availability of massive amounts of data, PwC analyst Matthew Duffy said in a session at the show.
According to Duffy, data drives all the major technology changes that PwC advises businesses to examine: subscription or as-a-service models, connected devices and sensors, and conversions between business to business (B2B0 and business to consumer (B2C) approaches.
“Data availability now is greater than it’s ever been, and that’s where AI comes into play,” Duffy said. “It’s not just about driving cost efficiencies in an existing business model, but understanding your customer and your customer’s customer, so you can create a whole new value proposition.”
In fact, he said that PwC is not just giving that advice to its clients but applying it to the firm’s own strategy as well. That can be seen in the firm’s move in recent years to build its “Connected Solutions” business unit.