Supply Chain by the Numbers
   
 

- Sept. 21, 2012
   
  Supply Chain by the Numbers for Week of Sept. 21, 2012
   
 

Baxter the Robot is Reasonably Priced; Longshoremen Agree to Keep Containers Moving for Now; FedEx Sees Continued Market Changes; Walmart Saying Partial Goodbye to Middlemen
   
 
 
 

$22,000

Price for which you can buy a new age industrial robot from Rethink Robotics, as the company released its first and widely anticipated commercial product this week. The robot is named Baxter, by the way, and can be ordered on line. Rethink says this robot can be up and working in a manufacturing site in just about 1 hour, without programming, is safe enough to be working right alongside human workers, and will help keep manufacturing on US soil. Rethink was founded by Rodney Brooks, once of MIT, who earlier invented the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.
 
 



 
 
 

3

Approximate number of months that the current contract between the Longshoremen’s union and the umbrella organization representing East and Gulf coast ports will be extended, keeping those ports open well past the peak shipping season, under an agreement reached this week. The existing contract was scheduled to expire Sept. 30, and the two sides are said to be far apart, leading to the worrisome possibility that port traffic would slow to a crawl if a strike was called by the union at the end of this month. Now, the contract has been extended until Dec. 29.
 
 
 
 
 
5%

Drop in US express shipments for industry giant FedE in its just ended quarter, the result of both a softening economy and changes in how shippers want to move the goods. With more domestic shippers increasingly choosing ground over air (in part because of better ground service that negates the delivery time advantage of express), FedEx is going to soon announce a major restructuring of its US network. “I think you’ll be surprised at the magnitude of that change,” FedEx CEO Fred Smith told Wall Street analysts this week.
 
 
 
 
 
$1.7 Billion

 

Amount of revenue global sourcing firm Li & Fung generated in the first 12months of its contract to source goods for Walmart’s international operations, under a separate company called Direct Sourcing Group. The deal offered Walmart an option to buy the company, but this week, Walmart disclosed it would not be exercising its right to do so. The Wall Street Journal reports that Walmart is partially winding down the relationship, with a strategy of more company managed global sourcing than using a middleman – similar to a switch it made for US operations a few years before.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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