Supply Chain by the Numbers for Dec. 13, 2019

Supply Chain by the Numbers

- Dec. 13, 2019 -

FedEx Drives a Long Way for Hub Workers; IMO Sulfur Mandate have Impact already on Container Carriers; eCommerce Losing Some Luster in CPG; Successful Long-Distance Autonomous Truck Test




200
That's about how many FedEx workers take a two-hour bus ride nightly from Cleveland, Mississippi to the company's major sortation hub in Memphis, and then back again, for a four-hour round trip. That according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The deal is this: FedEx is struggling to find enough workers in low unemployment rate Memphis, while jobs are less plentiful and come at lower wages in more rural areas such as Cleveland. So FedEx provides the transportation, and the workers endure the awful commute. The FedEx busing program runs year-round and is nearing its first anniversary. When FedEx initially held a job fair in Cleveland for Memphis jobs, it expected maybe a few dozen people. 500 showed up. But most of those candidates didn't have cars or couldn't afford to drive themselves – so the FedEx bus program was born. And the workers come, despite pay of not much over $13 per hour. "If the jobs are not coming to the Mississippi Delta, then we have to take the people to the jobs," a FedEx HR manager says.
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That is how many days it is taking at the port of Singapore for a container ship to book a refueling barge with low sulfur fuel that is compliant with new emissions rules from the International Maritime Organization (IMO). That is about three times longer than the normal lead time for traditional bunker fuel service. This as the IMO rules on sulfur – which can be met either by switching fuels or by installing expensive scrubbers – are set to go into effect Jan. 1. But many are calling for a delay, including Greece's merchant marine organization, in a country that some 20% of the world's commercial fleet owners call home. "We are yet to be confronted with the full scale reality of the availability, compatibility and safety challenges and grave risks of the new marine low-sulfur fuel," the head of the Greek shipping group said. But the IMO is not backing down: Kitack Lim, the IMO's secretary-general, said last week that "We are all ready to go." Some are saying the new rules will costs carriers and shippers tens of billions annually – and put some ship lines out of business.



$1 Billion
That is what consumer products giant Unilever paid in 2016 for then fast-growing Dollar Shave Club, the on-line razor subscription service. Now more than three years later, the business still isn't making money. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, a number of consumer packaged goods companies, are falling a bit out of love with ecommerce's potential and putting renewed focus on physical stores. "There are many, many launches that grow fast, and people call them successes because they grow fast," says Procter & Gamble CEO David Taylor."We're in the world of having to create value, not just grow. A business model that makes money is a higher challenge." Dozens of on-line consumer-products startups are finding their success depends on getting on shelves of Walmart, Target, Kroger's and more. The subscription model in CPG products seems to be especially under assault. Unilever, for example, has concluded that selling staple goods through on-line subscriptions doesn't make financial sense. Similarly, P&G tested on-line subscriptions on a number of products, most prominently with Tide laundry pods. But consumers never bought in, and P&G recently scrapped that effort, as brick and mortar retails actually wins a round.



2800
That's how many miles an autonomous truck recently travelled in a successful test by food maker Land O'Lakes, according to news reports this week. The route went hub-to-hub trip from Tulare, California, to Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The trip was completed in less than three days, hauling a fully-loaded refrigerated trailer of perishable cargo. The truck was equipped with technology from a company called Plus.ai, and included advanced autonomous driving system, which uses multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms, and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies. The press release said the truck drove primarily in autonomous mode across interstate 15 and interstate 70, passing through varied terrains and weather conditions. A safety driver was onboard at all times to monitor and assume control if needed, and a safety engineer was present to monitor system operations. The trip included rainy and snowy roads heading east. Maybe we will see autonmous trucks someday.