How UPS saved millions of dollars; this will surprise you!

In 2004, UPS announced a new policy for its drivers: the right way to get to any destination was to avoid left-hand turns.

This new policy might result surprising, but as a logistics company with some 96,000 trucks, much of UPS's business can be distilled to a series of optimization problems around reducing the amount of fuel used, saving time, and using space more efficiently.

UPS engineers found that left-hand turns were a major drag on efficiency. Turning against traffic resulted in long waits that wasted time and fuel, and it also led to a disproportionate number of accidents.

By mapping out routes that involved a series of right hand turns UPS improved profits and safety. As of 2012, the right turn rule combined with other improvements saved around 45 million litters of gas and reduced emissions by the equivalent of taking 5,300 cars of the road for a year.

Describing the policy in a speech, the CEO of UPS told his audience "I can see a few of you smiling out there, and I know what you may be thinking. But it really works."

If you don't believe it, well, that's why Mythbusters exists:

And of course there are still a few left turns!!

You will see UPS drivers take left turns on occasion, especially in residential neighborhoods without much incoming traffic. Since UPS uses software to map out routes, it can send drivers on right turn on heavy routes while making exceptions when a left turn is easier and faster.

This might not be worth implementing on your next run to the groceries, but keep in mind that is by no means as crazy as it sounds!

Pallets; when you thought that there was only one thing you can do we them

When you thought pallets were only meant to be used in warehouses and with the only purpose of storing merchandise, there is life for these awesome pieces of wood or plastic after they have served their time in the depot.

Don´t believe me? check the below video out and get started on recycling your old, or new, pallets! More than 200 hundred idead to take them back to life!

Bonus track: This is an awesome way to go across the city!

Behind the scenes: Red Bull air racing

When you go to the races, when you go to your favorite concert, when you arrive at the awesome music festival or the amazing temporary collection, you only see a very little part of the spectacle. It hard to believe, but sometimes, the behind the scenes is even more impressive that what your eyes can see....


This is what you see:

But behind this, there is this:

I don´t believe those that think logistics are boring!

The journey of a Spanish tomato, from the field to your table

The journey of a tomato, from the plan to de counter, how the downstream journey increases the price, how intermediates benefit and why the system needs to change to avoid wastage and ensure an even share of the costs and gains.

* Images from Kurioso blog (https://kurioso.es/english-2/the-odyssey-of-the-spanish-tomato/)

Gartner 2016 top 25 Supply Chain companies

A year on, Gartner, the leading information technology research and advisory company has presented the list with the top 25 supply chain companies.

If you have been following this blog, you already know that this is a recurrent topic every year for us, and you can find out more about the criteria followed by Gartner to come up with this ranking in previous posts here.

This year, the usual suspects top the table with P&G and Apple being awarded the "Masters category" that highlights the accomplishments and capabilities of long-term supply chain leaders in the top 25. To qualify for the Masters category companies need to be in the top 5 ranking for at least 7 out of the past 10 years, so quite an achievement for both companies, that are the undisputed leaders in supply chain currently.

After these two "monsters" of the supply chain, in 2016 the companies that made it to the top  5 are Unilever, McDonalds, Amazon, Intel and H&M with textil giant Inditex fishing on the verge of the top 5.

Not major changes this year in the top 25 from 2015, with the exception of the inclusion of Glaxo that moved up the latter from position 42 in 2015 to making the top 25 in 2016 (position 23). On the other hand, consistent top 25 companies like Cummins and Qualcom didn´t make it this year to the exclusive 25 best supply chain companies.

You can find the complete list in the Gartener website, clicking here.

I look forward to next years list and to see if any of the current top 5 companies can dethrone Apple and P&G from the top of the list!

Sustainable and ethical supply chain

Always good to remind ourselves that in the end, not only Supply Chain, but all departments should be driven by a sustainable ethos, and that there are still millions of people in the modern days working under conditions of slavery.

Worth watching the below talk focusing on a topic that seems so unreal that even modern researches have overlooked the dimension of the problem.

WFP logistics blog

Searching for something interesting to inspire me to write a new post for the blog, I ended up in the World Food Programme (WFP) website, you know what happen when you look on Youtube for your favorite song and 15 minutes later you find yourself watching videos of cats singing ballads dressed as Elvis Presley!

It was a very pleasant surprise to discover that the WFP website also have their own blog where they write some pretty interesting stuff about what they do and how they do it, and it was an even a pleasanter surprise to find the also have specific section devoted to logistics.

I recommend anybody interested in logistics and specially to those that want to know more about the challenges an organization like WFP faces when trying to deliver they services to the remotest parts of the world to have a look at their blog.

http://www.wfp.org/logistics/blog

Click in the below link for some taste of what they write about, and since you now know what they do and how challenging it is, support them!

http://www.wfp.org/logistics/blog/what-it-takes-reach-remote-corners-chad

The logistics of the future: Driver-less cars

One emerging technology that has been getting a lot of hype in the past few years is the self-driving car.

Not long ago driver-less cars seemed more something taken from a science fiction movie than a reality, but in the year 2016 as a result of increasing sophistication of computer navigation, GPS technology and camera technology, driver-less cars are a reality and multi million dollar companies like Google or Apple have been investing in the development of the technology that will send the majority of car and truck drivers to the dole office.

The logistics industry will probably be one of the first training grounds for such automated vehicles and shipping companies will probably adopt the technology faster than other industries.

But have you ever wondered what will be the impact of driver-less cars and trucks on the logistics field in general? Below you can see a few aspects that most defiantly will be affected:

- Safety: Improved safety driven by a reduction in human errors

- Lower environment impact: Driven by fewer vehicles on the road and more efficient fuel consumption

- Higher efficiency: By allowing trucks to travel 24/7 without requiring rest time

- Warehousing operations: through technology like autonomous loading, auto pallet movers and assisted order picking (we talk about this in another post that you can read here)

-  Last mile delivery

- Reduce drive shortage in the trucking industry:

- Costs savings: Some of them include: labor costs through the reduction of drivers, fuel consumption through a more efficient drive, vehicle utilization and insurance cost.

If you want to go in depth, I’d recommend you to read the below report by DHL that really go into detail:

DHL driver less cars report

And for those still reluctant to believe that this is coming, and I can tell you it’s coming soon, watch out!