Supply Chain by the Numbers for Week of Sept. 26, 2014

Supply Chain by the Numbers

- September 26, 2014 -

China Wants Big Money to Reduce Its Carbon Emissions; Is Anyone's CSCMP Number Lower than Jack Ampuja's? DHL Launches Its Parcelcopter; US Foods Links Vendor POs to Transport Efficiency



7
Distance in miles a DHL drone was scheduled to fly today each way to deliver medicines to a remote island off Germany's northwest coast. This test of what DHL is calling the "parcelcopter" will involve delivery to Juist, an island of just 2000 people. The drone will land twice per day in a designated area and drop off the medicines, which will then be delivered to customers by local courier. As opposed to the grand drone visions be promulgated by the likes of Amazon and Google, however, DHL says it sees very limited use of drones for package deliveries. It sees drone technology as being suitable only in special situations, such as to deliver to remote locations like this island, where the drones may be more cost-effective than to send a traditional delivery truck or a use bike messenger. One factoid that came out of the DHL announcement is that bad weather can easily scuttle planned drone flights.

602

That's the badge number of SCDigest friend Jack Ampuja, long-time logistics and supply chain professional now both at the University of Niagara and running packaging optimization company Supply Chain Optimizers. Why is that noteworthy? Turns out CSCMP and its predecessor organizations have been assigning this membership number in sequence to everyone who joined the organization or registered for an event since the National Council of Physical Distribution Management was formed in 1963 - meaning Ampuja was very, very early in the game indeed. SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore joined what was then CLM sometime in the 1990s, for example, and has member number 67854. Today's new numbers are well into the six-digit range. Anyone out there have a lower number than 602?



15-25%
That's the amount that a manager from technology provider Aerostream said companies can save in transportation costs from changing current order patterns and profiles to vendors to maximize logistics efficiency. That according to a presentation this week at the CSCMP annual conference in San Antonio. In fact, it is this ability to leverage vendor orders in terms of quantities and timing that give the real total cost advantage to buying companies in terms of taking control of inbound freight versus letting vendors manage their freight. This perspective was validated during the presentation by US Foods, which has used Silversteam technology to make major improvements in its transport costs by adjusting vendor POs for logistics optimization.



$100 Billion
That's the amount of funding that the top developed economies have rather vaguely pledged to transfer to developing economies to help them transfer to "low carbon" economies, based on a UN accord a couple of years ago. The pledge is of course controversial, and a report from China this week added to that controversy by saying the $100 billion was just the starting point - that from the second largest economy in the world that is likely to become number 1 soon by some estimates. Carbon emission cutbacks by China and other developing countries, the document says, will be "dependent on the adequate financial and technology support provided by developed country parties." The $100 billion current pledge by 2020 is only the "starting point" for additional Western financial commitments that must be laid out in a "clear road map," which includes "specific targets, timelines and identified sources," China says. This will get interesting, we guarantee.