The Center for eBusiness at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a clear-cut mission: To be the leading academic source of innovation in management theory and practice for e-business. Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the center, is responsible for making that mission a reality.

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Miami based Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and SCM Global Logistics, a US ethnic minority owned business, have entered an alliance to create a range of supply chain solutions. During the five-year agreement, Hellmann will give SCM access to its technology and to a worldwide network. The relationship will also allow Hellmann to enter new sectors and access a more diverse client base.

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An unwelcome question mark has been raised by German administrators over the future of Deutsche Bahn (DB) and its logistics subsidiary Schenker. A report in the national German press has revealed that Germany’s federal court of auditors is urging the government to break up the organisation, splitting the rail operations away from the logistics business.

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Demand-driven strategies require new capabilities in the warehouse, and companies that do not formulate DDSN roadmaps to become demand driven face the risks of higher costs and poor customer order performance.

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The Transportation Management Systems (TMS) market has grown from $468 million in 1998 to a forecasted $956 million in 2005. Over the past seven years, the goals of TMS end users have remained relatively the same (reduce costs, improve service levels, etc.), but the technology/vendor landscape has changed significantly. Companies that plan to invest in a TMS, as well as existing users, need to understand these changes in order to make a well-informed investment decision.

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Privacy advocates leery of RFID have been pointing out how the technology could be misused to track all kinds of consumer-buying habits, and comparisons to Big Brother are common in their arguments. Do these privacy groups have a valid point or are they just standing in the way of progress?

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With longer supply chains and a smaller protective buffer due to condensed lead times and lower inventory levels, today’s version of supply chain agility involves managing by exception and proactively responding to changing conditions, both routine and cataclysmic. An agile supply chain provides timely warnings about potential problems and helps control costs without reducing service levels. It also helps manufacturers ratchet up competitiveness.

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Five of the world’s leading companies in the development, implementation and utilization of supply chain automation technology, Intermec Technologies, the METRO Group, Procter & Gamble, DHL and IBM are jointly demonstrating RFID use in the retail supply chain in booth #1443 at the National Retail Federation’s 95th annual NRF show, New York, Jan. 15-18, 2006.

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Air Products (Nachrichten) today announced the formation of a joint venture with nPhase, LLC, looking to capitalize on the emerging trend of using inventory management services to gain supply chain efficiencies across a broad array of industrial markets. Specifically, the joint venture will focus on the use of customized machine-to-machine (M2M) telemetry that allows remote electronic monitoring of inventory levels in tanks or other containers.

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The carriers of most of the world’s goods are either tankers or containerships, and the economics of their use has called for larger and larger vessels. But bigger is not always better. And they are getting bigger every day. Many of the newest ships are already too big to go through the Panama Canal (these are called post-Panamax ships). Some large tankers are even too big to go through the Suez Canal.

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