News Articles

April 7, 2009

Is Distribution Dead?

Thought leaders from the Supply Chain Execution and Technologies Group at the Material Handling Industry of America discuss the big issues confronting industry today as well as the emerging solutions.

Is Distribution Dead?
SCE, April 7, 2009

It’s not an idle question. Even before the current economic downturn, supply chain  managers were confronting the challenge of increasing service levels and reducing operating expenses in light of global competition and rising fuel and labor costs. Every business is being forced to rethink the ways in which they manufacture, warehouse and distribute, and ship their products to market. In that environment, is distribution as we know it dead? And if so, how might the distribution model of the future look different?

Joe Uhrinek, Daifuku America: If distribution as we know it is dead, none of us would be here trying to improve it for our customers. What we do have to do is to continue to train our clients and our potential clients on the new and existing supply chain technologies and tools in the market. Many of them have been working with only traditional technologies for so long that they might not be aware of tools like supply chain execution and warehouse automation systems that can dramatically improve their operations.
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