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.
As a college student, Craig Weiss was attracted to logistics because of the problem-solving opportunities it offered. By that measure, the profession has clearly delivered on its promise. In the 20 years since Weiss entered the field, the logistics world has been rocked by a technology revolution, regulatory upheaval, and an epic trucking capacity crunch, to name just a few of the challenges.
Weiss has had a front-row view of the turmoil. For the past 16 years, he has held supply chain leadership positions with the Chicago-based packaged-foods giant Conagra Brands, whose portfolio includes such household names as Hunt's, Healthy Choice, Duncan Hines, Birds Eye, and Bertolli. Today, he is the company's senior vice president, supply chain, responsible for the full gamut of supply chain planning functions as well as transportation and warehousing.
Prior to joining Conagra Brands, Weiss held managerial roles at third-party logistics service providers ODW Logistics and Total Logistic Control (now part of Ryder), and served as a consultant at Ernst & Young. He spoke recently with DC Velocity Group Editorial Director Mitch Mac Donald about the shifting tech landscape, the supply chain of the future, and what keeps him up at night.
Q: Let's start with your career migration. How did you end up in the supply chain profession?
A: Actually, I got a degree in logistics in college. A professor of mine [at Central Michigan University], Dr. Robert Cook, convinced me that logistics was a great field to go into, and that if you like a fast-paced environment with opportunities to resolve operational challenges and work with people, logistics would be a great career choice. That is ultimately what helped guide me into a career in logistics.
Q: Could you tell us a little about the operations you oversee?
A: My current role at Conagra is leading the back end of our supply chain, meaning I oversee our supply chain planning functions, which includes demand planning as well as supply and inventory replenishment planning. I also lead Conagra's logistics team, which is transportation and warehousing, and our customer supply chain team, which is our strategic interface with our customers. I'm involved in several other initiatives as well, including our corporate enterprisewide productivity program and our DC network optimization program.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you face in today's market? That is, what keeps you up at night?
A: There are a couple of things that keep me up at night. Number one is the speed at which the supply chain and our customer's expectations are evolving and the challenges of staying relevant and competing in that fast-changing world.
Another, more tactical, challenge is how to enhance the efficiency of our freight-handling operations. The trucking capacity challenges of the past few years have really forced us to look at our distribution centers and examine our traditional notions about how long it should take to turn a truck around. We're now looking at ways to speed up the loading/unloading process and move trucks through our yards faster—including the possible use of some sort of advance reservation system.
We've set some pretty aggressive goals for improving the speed at which trucks can get in and out of our facilities.
Q: Turning to your distribution and fulfillment centers, are they internally staffed, outsourced to a third-party service provider (3PL), or a combination of the two?
A: It's a combination. We operate a number of our own distribution centers, and we also partner with some of the industry's leading 3PLs.
Q: One of the questions that often come up with 3PLs is how to maintain oversight of their operations and ensure that you're working toward the same objectives. How do you handle that?
A: I think it starts with having good strategic alignment of the two organizations, in finding ways to ensure that what's good for Conagra is also good for our third parties and vice versa. We want to be seen as a strategic customer with our third parties, so we go out of our way to ensure that they understand not only what we're doing in distribution but also what we're doing as a company.
We regularly bring our third parties in to discuss our growth plans, our customers' expectations, and our cost pressures. We include them as part of our staff meetings and truly operate as though they were an extension of our organization.
Q: Turning to your own DCs, are you having difficulty finding the labor and talent you need, and if so, how are you addressing that?
A: It can be challenging to find good, qualified people, especially for the more technical roles in some of our rural locations. We are constantly in search of the next great way to attract, retain, and develop talented people.
We have found that our teams are most effective when we create the right work environment for them and provide the right tools to succeed. This includes giving teams the freedom to own their work and results by promoting independent decision-making and eliminating bureaucracy, as well as ensuring that they are both accountable for their results and recognized for their contributions.
We also put a lot of emphasis on modernizing our processes, including investing in the right technology to help bring it all together.
Q: You provided a nice segue into another topic I wanted to touch on with you, which is technology. What are some of the technologies you're using to manage your DC and fulfillment operations?
A: I think we have a great track record at Conagra of leveraging technology to stay competitive in today's world. We use a suite of best-of-breed technology solutions to manage our supply chain operations. And we are constantly looking for new opportunities we can take advantage of, whether it is cloud computing, artificial intelligence, or predictive analytics solutions.
Q: Are there some technologies on the horizon that you think hold a lot of promise for your operations?
A: Yes, one example would be technologies like sensors that have the potential to provide true end-to-end visibility across the supply chain—visibility that in the past was sometimes hard to get.
Another area is automation—distribution center automation not just for e-commerce operations but also for facilities that are still shipping a combination of traditional truckloads, full pallet loads, and e-commerce orders. We are looking to take advantage of that both internally and with our third parties.
Q: Let's talk about the future. If you were to come to work tomorrow and it was Q4 2029 rather than 2019, what would look different to you?
A: The future of how food will be purchased and delivered will be very different, and as a result, I think that the forward-thinking nature of our operations will be very different. We will be focused on more predictive analytics of events that will occur months in the future—largely because we'll have access to cross-functional operations data that will enable us to foresee potential constraints and obstacles, and then respond to them.
The folks doing that will work across a broader swath of the supply chain. As the lines between transportation planning, inventory planning, and warehouse planning begin to blur, I think we will have fewer people in functional roles and more in cross-functional roles who will have a better understanding of the implications of their decisions.
Q: What should supply chain organizations be doing now to prepare for the future you just described?
A: Get the right people, with the right skills, and with the right structure, and then make the right investments in processes and technology to meet the goals of the company and its customers. Structurally, work to merge supply chain disciplines with analytic disciplines. Recruit people who not only have good operations skills and want to work with the products but also bring that analytical skill set. When you bring the operational and the analytic together, I think that is where you have your future supply chain.
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.