Summer 2018 Newsletter
New Dining-In Trend Strains Restaurant & Food Supply Chains
Source: Supply Chain 24/7: April 18, 2018 · By Nigel Duckworth
Ordering In Trend Has Raised the Stakes in the Food Supply Chain
The dining in trend is hot and expected to keep on growing. A Cowen and Company study predicts that restaurant meal delivery will grow from $43 billion in 2017 to $76 billion in the next four years. That’s 176% growth by 2022. How can restaurant companies capitalize on it without compromising food quality?
Companies should also ramp up their food supply chains to deal with this demand, and they ensure food safety and high standards do not lapse under the strain.
“The foodservice segment is beginning to see the impact of omnichannel distribution in the same way that electronics and fashion have. Food orders can come to the kitchen from the waitstaff or by phone, web, or an app. In some cases, those orders can be fulfilled from more than one location, too.” (Inbound Logistics: Dining In is the New Dining Out)
Read Article on Supply Chain 24/7 >
Retail sales are up in March, reports Commerce and NR
Commerce reported that March was up 0.6% compared to February at $494.6 billion and was up 4.5% compared to March 2017.
For the first quarter, total retail sales were up 4.1% compared to the same period a year ago. March snapped a three-month stretch of sequential declines for monthly retail sales
Read Article on Supply Chain 24/7 >
DHL and IBM predict artificial intelligence will be as omnipresent in commercial logistics processes as it is in consumer applications today.
By Eric Johnson |Thursday, April 19, 2018
DHL and IBM this week outlined the areas where artificial intelligence will make the biggest impact in logistics.
In a joint report (http://www.dhl.com/ai), the two major global companies said AI already is being implemented in back office, operational and customer-facing situations, particularly around four capability areas.
“AI is enabling a shift in the industry from reactive to proactive, from manual to autonomous, from forecasting to predictive, and from standardized products to personalized,” Ben Gesing, project manager of trend research at DHL’s Innovation Center in Germany, said in a briefing with American Shipper.
In the same briefing, Kieth Dierxx, IBM global industry leader for freight, logistics and rail, said that AI is creating what he called “anticipatory capability” in logistics. That covers areas as diverse as inventory management (leveraging computer vision technologies in warehouses to know exactly what inventory is on hand) to using historical data and real-time demand signals (like social media messages) to predict supply chain disruptions.
As an example of an AI-enabled system’s ability to help manage risk, that system could analyze social media messages related to workplace satisfaction at an overseas supplier to better predict if that supplier will be able to meet the requirements of a production order.
