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.
Editor’s note: To mark the start of our 20th publishing year, we offer Group Editorial Director Emeritus Mitch Mac Donald’s inaugural “Outbound” column, which laid out the new magazine’s mission and unique approach to the market. Some 480 print editions later, the premise on which the brand was founded remains just as relevant today as it was in January 2003, when the column below appeared in our launch issue.
Nearly a decade ago, in the midst of an interview I was conducting, a high-profile supply chain consultant delivered a rather striking pronouncement. “Quality is dead,” he said. “Speed is king.”
The speaker was George Stalk, who was then a senior vice president with Boston Consulting Group. And his comment came at a time when the entire world seemed fixated on “quality” as the holy grail of business success. Whether it was product quality, process quality, systems execution quality, or any other type of quality, we were all convinced that paying attention to quality would ensure we’d come out on top.
Stalk, who offered his observation while discussing how companies would seek to differentiate themselves in the future, was among the first to realize that quality was not sustainable, in and of itself, as a long-term differentiator. Though his 1993 comment certainly elicited more than a few gasps, it’s clear in hindsight that he was right.
Going back to the 1970s, you can trace the ways in which companies sought to separate themselves from the pack. First it was price, which we thought was synonymous with value. But as our economy began to expand globally, American businesses learned some hard lessons. Japanese automakers, for instance, took big bites out of Detroit’s market share with a religion-like passion for quality initiatives.
Probably in reaction to that, many companies made quality their focus in the early 1980s. Ford Motor Co. is perhaps the most memorable example, but it wasn’t the only U.S. company that made quality “Job One.” On the upside, we experienced quantum leaps in product and process quality. On the downside, companies were left with a familiar and perplexing question: If everybody offered low prices and high quality, how could they stand out from the crowd?
Stalk saw the answer before many others: speed. His comment hit me the moment I heard it. And it has stuck with me in the years since. Working at the time for magazines that had a great deal vested in “Annual Quality Reports,” I was never able to convince my superiors that the time had come to shift some editorial emphasis away from quality in favor of speed.
Well, it took starting a new magazine, but it’s finally happened. You hold in your hands the culmination of a thought process that began during that fateful interview with George Stalk, although I don’t think I realized it at the time. Over the past 15 years covering the logistics/material handling/supply chain field as a business journalist, I’ve been struck by what a well-designed and -implemented supply chain strategy can do for a company. It can, without question, put a company at a clear competitive advantage.
It’s not hard to see why. To succeed in business today, you need to build on all those value propositions we learned about in the ’70s and ’80s. Your price must be very competitive. Your product or service quality must, at a minimum, match your competitors’. Without those two components, you have no foundation for success.
But that’s no longer enough. To rise above the crowd, you must also serve the customer in ways that clearly differentiate you from the others. More and more, providing truly impressive customer service comes down to one thing: speed.
Everything about DC Velocity, from the name of the magazine itself, to the topics covered, to the way we’ve written and designed the stories, centers on the theme of speed. In addition to being the first publication created to serve the distinct informational needs of people managing logistics operations, DC Velocity is intended to be the magazine that delivers must-have business intelligence quickly so that you can grab the information you need and move on to the other challenges of your work day.
In essence, we hope you’ll quickly come to realize that this is the magazine you need to make sure you are up to speed.
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.