Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The one thing to know about Brian Eddy is that he never turns away a person who wants to work.
Eddy is general manager, business development and marketing for Olean, N.Y.-based The Rehabilitation Center, a nonprofit organization that hires individuals with disabilities—many of a profound nature—to work in its various divisions. Perhaps the most visible of its operations is SubCon Industries, which delivers forward and reverse logistics services for large third-party providers (3PLs) that would rather offload the overflow work than do it themselves.
SubCon, based just south of Buffalo and the Canadian border, employs more than 200 people. For some of them, the division may be their only viable option for employment, Eddy said, adding that while the general unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent, the unemployment rate among disabled persons is about 75 percent.
Formed nearly 50 years ago to provide so-called forward logistics solutions, SubCon in 2005 expanded into the reverse logistics segment. Though forward logistics accounts for about 80 percent of SubCon's business mix, the reverse logistics business is growing at about 100 percent a year and will likely surpass the division's traditional forward logistics operations within the next few years, Eddy said.
SubCon didn't enter the reverse logistics business just because it was a high-demand segment of the market that many Tier I 3PLs did not want to play in, Eddy said. It expanded because reverse logistics is considered a labor-intensive discipline and it fit with the unit's mandate to employ any disabled person who wants to work.
"Our management likes the number of jobs it has created and its huge upside potential," Eddy said. "And this is our main goal, maximizing job creation for more folks."
Expanding opportunities
Connecting the disabled with supply chain opportunities is not a new concept. The most well-known example was the 2007 launch by drugstore giant Walgreen Co. to employ people with disabilities at its newly opened distribution center in Anderson, S.C. Today, workers with disabilities make up 40 percent of the workforce at that location, according to the company. Walgreen is so pleased with the results that it has expanded the program to other facilities, most recently at its new DC in Connecticut.
Walgreen and SubCon share the same core mission and values in helping the disabled find work. However, as a publicly traded entity tasked with making a profit for its shareholders, Walgreen must also examine whether the workers are delivering dollars-and-cents value for the company's investment, Eddy said. As a unit of a non-profit organization, SubCon isn't subject to that imperative.
Eddy could not comment in detail on its relationships with 3PLs, saying that myriad nondisclosure agreements with those companies prevent him from doing so. He said that the division would like to work more directly with shippers, but isn't sure how to go about reshaping its existing business model to do so. "We don't know how to reach out to these folks, but I suspect we could bring a lot of value to the table," he said.
Eddy said SubCon's value proposition, which is to offer the services of loyal, hard-working employees who are versatile enough to perform any number of needed tasks at a reasonable cost, will become more relevant in a tough economy as companies look to reduce costs and optimize their networks. They'll also put pressure on their Tier I providers to do the same.
"This is the perfect time for them to explore the many benefits and the value that nonprofit providers can bring to the table," he said.
But for all the value it may bring to shippers and 3PLs, SubCon understands that its reward comes in providing a paycheck and a purpose to those who might otherwise have neither.
As SubCon states in its brochure, helping workers with disabilities find meaningful employment is "the right thing to do." Eddy adds, "It's nice to see all the smiles each payday."
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 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.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.