The Supply Chainer

Yard management continues to expose one of the most persistent operational bottlenecks in modern logistics. Despite heavy investments in transportation management systems, warehouse automation, and advanced forecasting tools, many facilities still rely on fragmented visibility and manual processes at the physical point where inbound trailers, outbound loads, dock scheduling, labor, and inventory converge. Execution gaps here quickly cascade into broader network disruptions, a

Warehouse operators running multi-shift material handling fleets continue to face execution pressure around power system reliability. High upfront costs, infrastructure compatibility issues, and concerns over long-term support create hesitation even as lithium-ion adoption accelerates in high-throughput operations. Infrastructure and Cost Friction Many facilities still operate with legacy charging setups and forklift fleets designed around lead-acid systems. This creates real

The daily reality and dilemmas described in this article were written based on extensive conversations with a Supply Chain Director of a large retail chain operating across Northern Europe. The executive asked to remain anonymous because he spoke without requesting official company approval. As this director shared with us, most of his Mondays begin the same way — reviewing performance reports from 62 distribution centers and warehouses. Some sites perform reasonably well, wh

A trailer pulls into the gate at 7 a.m. after a 30 percent spike in inbound volume triggered by port bunching. The appointment calendar is already obsolete. Dock doors sit blocked. Receivers work from outdated spreadsheets. Pallets wait unverified on the yard. By the time the shift ends, detention charges have climbed, cycle counts are postponed again, and OTIF targets are slipping. The problem is no longer visibility. It is the gap between what the systems promised and what

As a fleet manager responsible for hundreds of forklifts, reach trucks, and support vehicles across multiple distribution centers, I start my day at 6:30 AM reviewing overnight performance data. Every morning brings the same reality: balancing tight budgets, maximum uptime, and operational pressures in a fast-moving supply chain. This article shares a typical day in my role, highlighting ten key challenges I face and presenting the leading solutions for each challenge – at le

Warehouse operators spent much of the past decade expanding fulfillment capacity as quickly as possible. Now many are discovering the harder problem is making existing facilities economically sustainable. Across retail, manufacturing, and third-party logistics networks, warehouse operators are facing simultaneous pressure from rising real estate costs, labor shortages, throughput demands, and increasingly volatile inventory flows. Expanding footprint is becoming both financia

For years, drone delivery was treated largely as a futuristic retail experiment. Pilot programs generated headlines. Short demonstration flights attracted investment. But most logistics operators remained skeptical that autonomous aerial delivery could scale economically beyond controlled test environments. That skepticism is beginning to shift. The current phase of the drone delivery market looks far less focused on novelty and far more focused on infrastructure. Operators a

For years, Israel’s defense industry operated under a relatively simple assumption: if demand existed, production capacity was available, and export licenses were approved, goods could move. That assumption is beginning to break down. The challenge facing Israeli exporters in 2026 is no longer limited to manufacturing or military demand. Increasingly, it is about logistics, routing, compliance, and political risk embedded deep inside the global supply chain itself. Ports, car

Procurement software vendors no longer describe AI primarily as a productivity tool. Increasingly, they describe it as labor infrastructure. Across enterprise procurement platforms, the conversation is shifting away from dashboards, workflow digitization, and approval automation toward something more operationally disruptive: AI systems capable of executing sourcing, negotiation, planning, and transactional work previously handled by procurement teams themselves. The timing i

For years, procurement automation largely meant digitizing approvals, centralizing sourcing events, or reducing paperwork inside fragmented enterprise systems. The newest wave of procurement AI is targeting something far more ambitious: replacing operational labor itself. Across procurement software vendors, the language is shifting away from workflow automation and toward autonomous execution. Instead of helping buyers complete tasks faster, vendors increasingly claim their

This week’s episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast examines how critical software and cloud dependencies are becoming a supply chain resilience issue. Host Tom Raftery is joined by Wayne Scott, GRC Solutions Lead at Escode, whose work focuses on supplier failure, service deterioration, concentration risk and stressed exit planning. The discussion explores why digital dependency can create operational fragility when organisations assume that outsourcing a service also t

Tariff volatility is reshaping freight movement far beyond the port gate. As customs timing, inland execution, and inventory positioning become more tightly connected, operators are discovering that the biggest supply chain bottlenecks increasingly emerge after cargo reaches shore. For many importers, the challenge is no longer simply moving containers through ports quickly. It is deciding when freight should formally enter commerce, how long inventory can remain in controlle