Articles

Retail

Trends—October 2015
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Trends—October 2015

Amazon Dash Turns the Tide When Amazon debuted its Dash Replenishment Service (DRS) and buttons in spring 2015, it gave consumers a taste for how the Internet of Things (IoT) can simplify even mundane tasks. The underlying DRS architecture enables connected devices that measure consumable usage to automatically order physical goods from Amazon when supplies […]

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Reader Profile | Jeff Larson: A Gem of a Job
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Reader Profile | Jeff Larson: A Gem of a Job

Jeff Larson is director of distribution engineering analysis at Tiffany & Co. in Parsippany, N.J. He joined Tiffany in 2001 and has held his current position since 2009. Responsibilities: Process improvement, distribution strategy, user testing and integration for the warehouse management system, and some procurement activities. Experience: Process engineer, manager – engineering analysis, Tiffany & […]

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Trends—September 2015
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Trends—September 2015

Rising Labor Costs Eat Into Fast Food Supply Chains When New York State’s wage board voted to raise minimum pay to $15 in July 2015, it set tails wagging around the country. The wage hike, which will be phased in over the next three years upon approval by the state’s labor commissioner, only applies to […]

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Felecia Stratton
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Just Another Brick in the Mall 

Travel around the world, and you see up-and-coming economies sporting many shiny new buildings, airports, ports, and factories, while more mature economies display aging legacy infrastructure. It’s the nature of progress. You see the same parallel in retail operations, where newer e-commerce models seem to overcome legacy brick-and-mortar models. But not entirely. Yes, e-commerce is […]

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Torben Kock
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CPG Market Demanding More Flexible Logistics Solutions

According to a new study released by Transport Intelligence (Ti), one of the world’s leading providers of expert research and analysis dedicated to the global logistics industry, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector (also known as Fast Moving Consumer Goods or FMCG) is a giant with global sales exceeding $550bn (USD). The Consumer Packaged Goods […]

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Retail Collaboration: It’s All in the Jeans
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Retail Collaboration: It’s All in the Jeans

When Lucky Brand Jeans was sold to a private equity firm, and had to separate from the supply chain of former parent company Fifth & Pacific Companies, the apparel business needed to quickly establish its own, standalone distribution center (DC). The company marshalled help from a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, a technology firm, and a […]

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Tom Caporaso
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What Customers Expect in the E-Commerce Age

Twenty years ago, selling and delivering retail goods to consumers was a relatively simple process. Nearly all purchases were made in stores, so if a retailer adequately stocked its shelves with desirable, dependable goods, shoppers were usually satisfied. If they weren’t, they often had limited options, depending on how far they had to travel to […]

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Joe Bellini
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Inventory Replenishment: Why Push When You Can Pull?

Today‘s supply chains are undergoing significant pressures to become more demand-driven. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers must choose the approach they hope will make the most profit. Should you produce goods according to demand forecasts, or by reacting to what consumers already bought? Companies are investing in a new generation of cloud technologies that enable the […]

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Trends—April 2015
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Trends—April 2015

Supply Chain Modeling: Believe It! The supply chain sector is increasingly adapting and deploying technology to better understand the unknown. Big data provides a wealth of information and historical precedent to benchmark and optimize current and future events. Modeling and design software similarly affords users the latitude to engineer and plan for potentialities before they […]

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Trends—March 2015
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Trends—March 2015

Learning the ABCs of DCs To be competitive in today’s dynamic retail space, online companies need to rethink distribution networks that were built to serve the brick-and-mortar store model, suggests research conducted by supply chain faculty at the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Haslam College of Business. Supply chain faculty surveyed more than 200 companies, and […]

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