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New Docket Grab Hanging Sign

Posted on by David Priestman

When the Samworth Brothers company was looking for a new hanging sign for its chilled distribution site in Leicester they chose to partner with inotec which specialises in supplying bespoke warehouse labelling and line marking solutions. The result is an innovative ‘docket grab’ hanging sign that uses ball bearings to grip dockets. These signs, which can be either single or double-sided, are now being used in the pick by line area of Samworth’s Oak Meadow facility.

The Samworth Brothers site in Oak Meadow Leicester has a storage capacity of over 10,000 pallets across chill, deep chill and frozen. Around 580 people work on the site with orders being picked by 160 warehouse operatives.

Glyn Maude is General Manager, Samworth Brothers Supply Chain, he explains why the new sign was needed, “As our business has grown rapidly over the last few years we needed to change how we picked orders in this warehouse. Originally the whole area was racked, but it was decided to take part of the racking down to create a pedestrian only picking area surrounded by barriers.

“This meant we could present the products to the pickers in that area instead of getting them to pick out of the racking. The lanes of pallets run towards the racking area and the stock comes into the picking area from underneath the racking, deposited by forklift truck.

“I knew that I would need hanging signs for the new area but couldn’t see anything suitable on the market. I’d seen other companies using drainpipes cut into segments with a slit to hold a label and I’d thought that there has to be a better way of doing this so I approached Steve Towler at inotec. I already knew Steve as he’d helped me with line marking and signs for our marshalling lanes here in Leicester and done a great job. Once I’d given him the size of sign and what it needed to do, he went away and came up with the docket grab concept. A couple of mock-ups later, we had our ‘docket grab’ hanging sign.

“One of the qualities I like about inotec is that they help me plan out and design what I need. They also give me an honest and accurate quotation regarding the cost; I get a lot of good advice from them. The idea of using ballbearings to grip the pallet labels was all inotec’s.
“In the pedestrian only zone the picker collects the pallet of stock using a hand pallet truck and walks down the picking line of pallets. He then scans the pallet label that is held in the hanging sign above a pallet, this details a retailer’s order. The label tells them how many cases to put on that particular pallet for that order. This allows us to control what stock is going where.

“We know when a pallet is fully picked as we’ve set the height of the hanging sign and the length of the label to indicate the full height of an order. When the pallet is full the picker can clearly see there is no room for more stock on that pallet. This means we have uniformity for all the pallets we’re picking. Prior to this we were sending pallets out that were all different heights – not many were too high but some were too low, now they all come out at a standard height.

“Our new way of working has helped us reduce the amount of pallets we’re sending out to retailers. It also ensures we fill the trucks up as much as we can so that we don’t put additional vehicles on the road. This reduces our distribution costs benefitting both us and our customers. A further advantage of the hanging signs is that the pallet labels are now up in the air and out of the way – before they were stuck on the pallet and could fall off, get stuck to something else or just generally go missing! The new sign system prevents this happening.

“Our pick accuracy is already really high at 99.98 per cent but we still have a margin for error that we want to eliminate. Although we’ve only been operating this pick by line system for a short time I am expecting to see an improvement in picking accuracy. The signage work that inotec has done here for us is great. We work really well together as our two companies have a lot in common in terms of work ethic and the way we view things. It’s a fantastic business, I’d give them ten out of ten every time.”

Wellness Company Partners with Fulfilment Hub

Posted on by David Priestman

Cambridge Nutraceuticals has joined forces with leading Bristol fulfilment company Huboo to help meet the growing consumer demand for its wide array of health and wellness supplements.

Founded over 10 years ago, Cambridge Nutraceuticals’ mission is to help people live longer, healthier lives through scientifically proven health supplements. The wellness brand has enjoyed rapid growth over the past decade – particularly post-Covid when consumer demand for health-boosting products skyrocketed.

As the bulk of its business is direct-to-consumer sales via its website, Cambridge Nutraceuticals has partnered with Huboo to support all of its fulfilment needs – a journey which has led to over 40% growth and helped Cambridge Nutraceuticals on its path to become one of the UK’s most trusted wellness brands.

Based in Bristol, Huboo provides multi-channel fulfilment and storage services for more than 1,500 businesses across the UK, Europe and the US. It is the pioneer of the ‘hub-based’ warehousing model – a unique human-centric system focused on ‘hubs’ – essentially micro-warehouses – that are run by small teams who participate in all aspects of the fulfilment process to make it more streamlined and efficient.

Huboo has supported Cambridge Nutraceuticals by facilitating quick and accurate product deliveries for its fast-growing customer base. And with over 85% of its customers ordering on a monthly subscription basis, partnering with Huboo has meant the business has been able to seamlessly manage regular, repeat orders – ensuring deliveries are punctual and tie in with when a previous order is due to run out.

Matt Keys, CEO at Cambridge Nutraceuticals, said: “With Huboo’s technology and logistics infrastructure on our side, we’ve been able to consistently focus our attention towards scaling the business – in the UK initially, but now increasingly overseas too.

“Huboo helps us ensure our subscribers’ deliveries arrive on time, minimising the build-up of a surplus. We also benefit from batch management, stock controls, real-time insights, inventory planning and quality assurance measures so that our supplements don’t exceed best before dates. Huboo is also able to provide letterbox friendly packaging, so customers don’t miss a delivery and have to take a trip to the post office.”

As a result of Huboo’s fulfilment support, Cambridge Nutraceuticals has been able to dedicate more focus to forging ahead with its growth plans, branching into new territories, and adding to an existing presence in the Middle East, Australia and Sri Lanka. It is also looking to further expand its innovative, patented version of lycopene, a natural food compound known to lower the risk of heart disease – called LactoLycopene – across multiple product ranges, to further bolster its growth prospects.

Paul Dodd, co-founder and CIO at Huboo added: “At Huboo, adapting to our customers’ growing fulfilment needs is crucial in helping them evolve as a business. Cambridge Nutraceuticals offers both subscription-based models, as well as traditional eCommerce sales – so having a fulfilment partner that can effectively manage both these order streams, without any glitches, is paramount. It’s been such a brilliant experience supporting Cambridge Nutraceuticals on their growth journey – we’ve strived to ensure their fulfilment needs are handled seamlessly by harnessing cutting-edge technology, and a passionate team, to enable a productive fulfilment process.”

Taiwan Election Unlikely to Impact Chip Supply Chain

Posted on by David Priestman

In a closely contested election held on 13th January 2024, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) secured the presidency of Taiwan with 40.1 per cent of the votes, defeating his rivals from the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). This is a historic achievement as it marks the first instance in Taiwan’s political history whereby a party has won three consecutive presidential elections.

However, Lai Ching-te’s victory was less substantial than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide win in the previous election. The DPP has lost its majority in Taiwan’s Legislative, securing only 51 seats out of the 113 seats – 57 seats are needed for a majority. As such, there may be opposition and delays when the DPP attempts to pass legislation, particularly regarding semiconductor manufacturing.

This can be seen as the DPP advocates for an independent Taiwan and has pursued stronger relations with the US and Japan, fostering collaborations in chip production and research. The strategy aims to reduce geopolitical risks for Taiwan’s premier chipmaker, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Meanwhile, the KMT party aims for a more conciliatory approach towards China, with this stance raising concerns regarding increased pressure on Taiwanese chipmakers.

Ritesh Kumar, director, procurement and supply chain intelligence at The Smart Cube, comments on how the outcome of the Taiwan election is set to impact the global semiconductor supply chain:

“Over the past decade, Taiwan has become an indispensable part of the global semiconductor industry. The island is responsible for 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductor output, encompassing crucial applications in smartphones, fighter jets, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

“The result of the recent Taiwanese presidential election is not likely to immediately alter the global chip supply. After winning the election, Lai Ching-te declared his readiness to soften his stance on Taiwan independence and restart conversations with China, which may diminish the potential hostile reactions from China in the short term.

“What’s more, the DPP is expected to strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry in Taiwan, while also decoupling Taiwan’s tech sector from China by establishing additional chip foundries in other major countries. This would secure a more reliable chip supply for global tech giants. Doing this would continue the party’s policies from its previous terms in power, which saw the TSMC invest substantially in advanced foundries in the US, Japan and Germany – a reflection of Taiwan’s close relationship with the West.

“However, the DPP may encounter objection and delays from the opposition KMT and TPP parties when it comes to passing legislation against China, as well as measures related to chip investments in the West. While this is likely to keep the global chip supply chain stable in the short to medium term, a delay in passing legislation may lead to a slowdown in the growth of both the domestic and global semiconductor markets.

“Nevertheless, until the new president takes office in May 2024, global semiconductor companies and other tech businesses are likely to monitor and assess the situation.”

Long-Term Plastic Waste Reduced

Posted on by David Priestman

American Airlines Cargo announces today that it reduced long-term plastic waste by more than 150,000 lbs, the equivalent of 8.6 million water bottles, in 2023. This is a result of a continued relationship with BioNatur Plastics™, launched by M&G Packaging, which manufactures a growing line of biodegradable plastic products for use in air cargo operations.

The carrier began transitioning to BioNatur Plastics products at major U.S. hubs in early 2022, reducing long-term plastic waste by the equivalent of 6.4 million water bottles in the first year. In 2023, American expanded its use of the biodegradable products beyond U.S. hubs to include regional domestic stations, such as Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW), Honolulu International Airport (HNL) and Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP), as well as internationally to Carrasco International Airport (MVD) and Santiago International Airport (SCL) in Latin America.

American plans to continue replacing traditional plastic used for stretch wrap and pallet covers with the BioNatur Plastics line, which is manufactured with a 1% load of an organic, food-safe proprietary additive that allows anaerobic bacteria to digest the plastic in a landfill. Outside of a landfill, the plastic has an indefinite shelf life and performs exactly like traditional plastic products.

“Sustainability is of paramount importance for us at American, and we are so pleased that our transition to BioNatur Plastics is one way we can implement real change in our cargo operations,” says Greg Schwendinger, President of American Airlines Cargo. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with BioNatur Plastics as we unite in working toward a greener future.”

Charles Rick, President of BioNatur Plastics adds, “American is a leader in sustainability and we are proud to work with the cargo team to make the switch to our biodegradable and recyclable plastics. We look forward to even greater impact together in 2024.”

Regular plastic can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in a landfill. BioNatur biodegradable plastics will biodegrade under landfill conditions in only 8 to 12 years. The end products are fully recyclable in normal waste collection streams, and with added strength, the plastics can be used in thinner amounts – thus minimizing the quantity of plastic use overall.

Increase Visibility and Automation Across Ecommerce

Posted on by David Priestman

Linnworks, an inventory management system (IMS), order management system (OMS) and warehouse management system (WMS) solutions provider and recently announced Connected CommerceOps platform, is pleased to announce its partnership with Virtualstock, Europe’s largest dropshipping and curated marketplace SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform. As a result of this integration, Virtualstock users can automate their connection to key suppliers in their ecosystem to synchronise inventory and order routing details.

Linnworks connects thousands of small, medium sized retailers with over 100 selling channels including global marketplaces, D2C platforms and emerging selling channels. Virtualstock is one of those key channels, offering product placement into the top 10 UK Retailers including John Lewis, Sainsbury’s Argos, Robert Dyas, B&Q, Currys, Screwfix, Ryman and Toolstation. By pairing these two organisations both the marketplace entity (retailer) and the seller (supplier) can enjoy full transparency and visibility with fully automated transfer of critical data upstream and downstream.

The Virtualstock platform is cloud-based and provides a frictionless connection into the retailers ensuring visibility across their supply chain – including stock availability, order status and delivery status. With Linnworks alongside, this visibility extends into the supplier network improving the ability to connect, sell and fulfil orders seamlessly for all parties. Key deliverables for the supplier community include; de-risking operations by automating connectivity; saving time and money through real-time centralised visibility, and ensuring compliance with channel Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

The integration between Virtualstock and Linnworks means that order and stock data will now flow seamlessly back and forth without the need for any manual interaction.

Other key functions of the partnership include:

• Inventory Updates – Linnworks can automatically send changes in stock levels to the channel
• Order Download – Channel orders can be automatically downloaded into Linnworks’ platform, allowing retailers to reserve available stock and avoid overselling
• Inventory Mapping – Existing and new channel listings can be linked to Linnworks inventory items for stock level and price updates
• Location Mapping – Orders can be downloaded and inventory updates sent from specific locations
• Order Despatch – Orders on the channel can be marked as shipped and provided with the tracking number and shipping service name via Linnworks.

Chris Timmer, Linnworks commented, “Automating a connection to market leading retailers is no longer a luxury, it is a must. Therefore, the partnership with Virtualstock couldn’t have come at a better time. In order to achieve smoother retail experiences for all, Linnworks and Virtualstock can now work together in order to meet ever-evolving customer demands. With this partnership, we are demonstrating our commitment to helping businesses conquer the complexities of multichannel selling and achieve new levels of productivity and profitability.”

Ed Bradley (pictured), Virtualstock concluded, “We are very excited to announce our partnership with Linnworks. Connecting thousands of vendors to the Virtualstock platform, not only enhances the control and visibility of consumer orders but offers choice to our retail clients and routes to market for brands and suppliers. With Linnworks’ extensive reach across a multitude of sales channels, it was the obvious choice to create the most powerful supply-and-demand network in the market.”

Fulfillment Experience Insights Dashboard

Posted on by David Priestman

Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH), a global leader in supply chain commerce, today launched the ‘Fulfillment Experience Insights’ dashboard to give retailers a real-time assessment of how their omnichannel fulfilment performance stacks up against the industry. Fulfillment Experience Insights provides continuous benchmarking of fulfillment performance, proactively informing retailers how they compare against a large pool of peers and competitors. This realtime ‘actuals versus actuals’ comparison avoids the inherent latency of most benchmarking tools.

Included in Manhattan Active® Omni, this new capability gives retailers a single view of digital order fulfillment KPIs like store pickup conversion, shorts and abandonment, time to fulfill and more. Retailers can evaluate, measure and adjust their supply chain execution strategies using aggregated and anonymized data from the Manhattan Active cloud ecosystem. This unique analytical tool, which includes the ability to quickly pivot between various timeframes, provides detailed insight into the experience a retailer is delivering for their customers.

“Introducing cutting-edge innovation like the Fulfillment Experience Insights Dashboard is one of the reasons Manhattan continues to be ranked the only leader in omnichannel order management,” said Amy Tennent, senior director of Product Management at Manhattan. “For the first time ever, retail operations teams can see exactly how they are performing against the rest of the industry. This is a complete game changer, because they now have a starting point to begin creating more efficiency and improving fulfillment performance for their customers.”

Manhattan is uniquely capable of developing this solution because hundreds of the world’s top brands use its fulfillment execution tools to process millions of orders every week. Drawing upon this extensive knowledge and experience, the company has skillfully identified the key performance indicators crucial to fostering growth and maximizing revenue.

Last year, Manhattan launched the first-of-its-kind Unified Commerce Benchmark which measured 286 customer experience capabilities across four segments. Of these four primary segments, ‘Promising & Fulfillment’ returned the lowest scores by a significant margin. Manhattan’s new dashboard gives retailers their real-time performance in this critical area, helping them become Unified Commerce leaders.

 

Intralogistics Performance is Paramount

Posted on by David Priestman

Automation solutions offer enormous potential when it comes to internal material flow. At this year’s LogiMAT trade show in Stuttgart, Germany, Linde Material Handling (MH) will be demonstrating the options available to small, medium-sized and large companies and showing how a wide range of project requirements can be successfully implemented. Energy, Safety and Warehouse Intelligence will be further key topics in focus at the centrally located exhibition booth in Hall 10. Offering the broadest portfolio of energy and safety options for industrial trucks and leading technical material flow solutions, the intralogistics specialist supports its customers on their way to greater efficiency, sustainability and performance.

Occupying more than 500 square meters, Linde MH’s main booth in Hall 10 (Booth B21 and B17) highlights current trends in intralogistics: Automation, Energy, Safety and Warehouse Intelligence. On display will be corresponding products and solutions which are designed to optimize the internal material flow. A live demonstration will showcase flexible and scalable automation solutions involving automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). Just a few meters away from the exhibition stand, in the loading yard between Halls 8 and 10, visitors can test forklifts for themselves or get an up-close look during vehicle demonstrations. Examples include various reversing assistance systems, such as the AI-based Reverse Assist Camera, that alert industrial truck drivers to people in the vicinity behind them. Additional exhibition space that offers hands-on experience with various vehicle models is located in the outdoor area between Halls 9 and 10.

“The Linde brand represents top performance in goods handling. This is achieved through innovative products and solutions, a high level of user-friendliness, a wide range of active and passive safety and assistance systems, customized individual solutions and the comprehensive consulting expertise of our sales organization. Our products and solutions ensure maximum productivity even under the most demanding operating conditions, such as those found in the beverage, paper, wood, food and chemical industries,” says Torsten Rochelmeyer, Senior Director Strategy & Solution Portfolio at Linde MH.

At LogiMAT 2024, Linde MH will showcase its expertise as a competent partner for the automation of material flow processes. “Together with our network partners, we have successfully planned and implemented hundreds of projects in recent years,” reports Rochelmeyer, referring to the sales organization’s extensive expertise and experience gained in small and large projects alike. Alongside this, standardized solution packages are available for simple transport tasks. “This allows existing brownfield processes in particular to be automated more quickly,” says the Linde trade show manager. The company’s automation experts can resort to a large product portfolio when it comes to implementing projects: The range extends from AMRs such as the Linde C-MATIC and the Linde C-MATIC HP, to automated pallet stackers (Linde L-MATIC) and tow tractors (Linde P-MATIC) all the way to reach trucks (Linde R-MATIC) and VNA trucks (Linde K-MATIC). Where complex automated material flow systems are required, colleagues from the Group’s sister company Dematic will be involved, whose booth in Hall 10 is directly adjacent to the Linde MH area.

The Energy area of the exhibition covers the company’s broad spectrum of available energy types, with a focus on the X-series electric counterbalanced trucks with lithium-ion batteries. They are just as powerful, robust and ergonomic as ICE-powered trucks, but are emission-free and potentially CO2-neutral in operation. However, diesel, LPG, CNG, lead-acid batteries, fuel cells and HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) are also available as power options. “Visitors who want to find out about suitable energy systems for their current or future fleet will be offered software-assisted advice that provides an initial assessment based on the requirements, general conditions and customer-specific situation. This can be followed by further analysis within the company,” explains Rochelmeyer. Another focus will be on the Linde connect fleet management system. In addition to access control, damage monitoring, vehicle and driver management, fleet usage analysis and predictive maintenance, the Linde connect:charger software module provides intelligent control of battery chargers, helping to avoid expensive power peaks.

In general, the following applies to all warehouse activities: The safer the internal material flow, the higher the productivity and thus the contribution to the company’s success. Using a reach truck equipped with extensive safety features, Linde MH demonstrates how fleet operators can ensure smooth processes and protect their employees. The features range from a large number of driver assistance systems such as the Linde Safety Guard for the mutual warning of pedestrians and drivers and the Rack Protection Sensor for avoiding collisions with racks and goods to various lighting solutions and protection systems like the Dynamic Mast Control system for reducing mast vibration.

In the Warehouse Intelligence area, guests can learn how to make their warehouse even more efficient and dynamic with the help of modular software solutions. An application consisting of a warehouse management system, a forklift guidance system and a warehouse control system provides real-time visualization of the warehouse through a three-dimensional view and shows the driver the fastest route to the destination. In the process, it automatically tracks the movements of the load carriers across changing storage locations, which ensures a high degree of transparency. The software is also capable of integrating and controlling various automated systems such as AGVs and shuttles.

Commit to Supply Chain Efficiency

Posted on by David Priestman

TradeBeyond has announced that OBI, Germany’s top DIY brand and a major player in home and garden retail across Europe, has selected TradeBeyond’s multi-enterprise platform for an extensive supply chain digitalization project. TradeBeyond’s CBX Suite will help OBI to optimize its supply chain end-to-end, from supplier management to its sourcing, quality, order management, and production processes for their own sourcing organization OBI Group Sourcing (OGS) in Asia.

TradeBeyond will replace OGS’s manual systems with efficient, interoperable cloud-based solutions based on real-time data, allowing the company to bring products to market faster and more cost effectively. The decision to partner with TradeBeyond comes at a crucial time, as OBI seeks to modernize its operations and maintain its competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market while moving beyond analogue systems that create inefficiencies and data re-entry challenges.

OBI’s adoption of TradeBeyond comes as tightening ESG regulations across Europe, including the new German Supply Chain Act (LkSG) and the European Union’s impending Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, are necessitating higher standards and more rigorous data collection from retailers than ever before. These legal requirements align with OBI’s commitment to social responsibility, which is why the company has made ESG an integral part of its future strategy.

“We recognized early that manual supply chain processes were inefficient and no longer up to the task of ensuring the sustainable products that our customers expect,” said Thorsten Bauer, Managing Director and Vice President Asia from OGS. “We were impressed by TradeBeyond’s deep understanding of the complexities of global sourcing, and by the company’s strong presence in Asia. Our partnership with TradeBeyond demonstrates our commitment to a more efficient, responsible supply chain, and to our customers. We’re proud that as we continue to scale, we’ll be able to ensure we do so sustainably.”

“Retailers across the globe, and especially across Europe, are realizing that outdated, legacy supply chain processes fall short in monitoring compliance and managing the mounting complexities created by new global supply chain due diligence laws,” said Tim Chiu, Senior Vice President at TradeBeyond. “By choosing to partner with TradeBeyond, OBI has reinforced its commitment to sourcing to the highest standards of responsibility, while staying at the forefront of supply chain innovation. It’s a privilege working with such a respected, forward-looking retail institution.”

OBI’s implementation of TradeBeyond will unfold in phases over the next year, with the first release set to go live by early 2024. TradeBeyond’s tailored implementations allow brands and retailers to address their greatest needs first so they can realize rapid efficiencies and cost-savings from the platform sooner.

Interoperable Solutions for Supply Chain Resilience

Posted on by David Priestman

Blue Yonder, a leading supply chain solutions provider, today announced the release of its largest product update in the history of the company, launching the first set of interoperable solutions across the entire supply chain – from planning to warehouse, transportation, and commerce – delivered on the company’s Luminate® Cognitive Platform. Leaning into interoperability allows Blue Yonder to provide its customers with increased productivity, reduced waste, and more resilient supply chains.

“Today’s supply chains are operated by a fragmented ecosystem of legacy solutions, with many being stitched together over time with custom configurations and code,” said Duncan Angove, CEO, Blue Yonder. “While many supply chain solution providers claim to offer end-to-end capabilities, it is typically confined to planning or execution spaces where they’ve integrated their own product suites. Blue Yonder is changing that. With this release, we are redefining end-to-end supply chains, and establishing a new category of solutions with interoperable capabilities aligned with our vision to create the supply chain operating system for the world.”

End-to-End Interoperability

As manufacturers, logistics companies, suppliers, and retailers look to build greater resilience and mitigate market volatility in their supply chain, they are often hampered by: siloed business processes and communications breakdowns, lack of visibility, disconnected solutions, and burdensome workflows across planning, transportation, warehouse, e-commerce, and last mile fulfillment. This can lead to inventory waste, high costs, loss of sales, slow responsiveness, lack of resilience and more.

Solving these supply chain challenges requires companies to coordinate and streamline planning and execution management across the end-to-end ecosystem. This includes:
● Orchestrating sourcing, production, logistics and network strategies in a single operating system to shorten lead times, improve service levels, optimise operational efficiencies, maximise demand, and reduce cost.
● Aligning predicted customer demand, network capacity, warehouse capacity, labour capacity, and transportation scheduling prior to sourcing or allocating goods for seamless inventory flow and reduced overhead.
● Building logistics loads that factor in real-time, on-shelf inventory to balance customer demand and waste, generating maximum revenue and margin.

Blue Yonder’s interoperable solutions answer these challenges by:
● Connecting processes, systems, and data seamlessly across Blue Yonder’s Supply Chain Planning and Execution solutions, providing a smarter, more scalable, real-time digital twin to streamline and accelerate enterprise-wide decision-making.
● Offering the end-to-end visibility needed to understand how decisions or actions impact adjacent teams so businesses can work synchronously toward a unified goal.
● Deeply embedding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) within the systems to drive decisioning, recommendations, and actions to support a future of autonomous supply chains.
● Ensuring all solutions connect through a single source of data, allowing true real-time collaboration across functions.

The result is more agile, coordinated decision-making that reduces costs, increases revenue, and improves customer loyalty.

Interoperability Enabled by Cutting-Edge Technology Innovations

Blue Yonder’s interoperable solutions are made possible as a result of three key strategic investments by the company:
1) Cloud Native Architecture on a Cognitive Platform: Blue Yonder’s Luminate ® Cognitive Platform is the industry’s premiere cloud-native supply chain platform, delivering enterprise-level speed, scale and security with upgrade-safe extensibility across workflows, data models, and functions. The platform offers infinite intelligence with unconstrained computing power, a single source of truth, and a reimagined user experience. Because Blue Yonder’s cloud-native applications all run on this centralised platform, this then allows companies to make faster, higher-quality decisions; eliminate data siloes; uplevel team performance by increasing productivity and accelerated adoption; and unlock capacity by leveraging the power of embedded AI.

2) Composable Microservices: A composable approach enables companies to augment and enhance existing technologies with Blue Yonder’s industry-leading IP and patented solutions — transforming business functions at the speed and scale that’s right for each company’s business. Blue Yonder’s composable microservices are small, deployable components that each offer a discrete set of capabilities, seamlessly integrated on connected workflows to solve specific functional needs, and interoperable with existing Blue Yonder solutions so businesses can innovate without the need to rip and replace existing investments. With Blue Yonder, businesses can start with the application stack they need today knowing they can easily add capabilities they want, when they’re ready. And instead of lengthy monolithic projects, Blue Yonder offers Composable Journeys, which are implementation paths tailored to the specific vision and budget of each customer and rolled out in phases that can provide expedited time to value.

3) Platform Data Cloud, Powered by Snowflake: Blue Yonder is among the first enterprise supply chain solutions companies building applications to natively run on the Snowflake Data Cloud. Blue Yonder’s Platform Data Cloud, Powered by Snowflake, makes it easy to deliver the right data, at the right location, at the right time by bringing together all the required data to run your supply chain in a centralised location. By combining Blue Yonder’s market-leading supply chain technology and IP with the Snowflake Data Cloud’s powerful capabilities, Blue Yonder is changing the game for its customers by reducing the cost, complexity and time required to transform data while enabling interoperability between applications and collaboration across clouds. Learn more here.

“For years, the supply chain industry has had a data problem – there’s too much of it, it’s scattered across disparate solutions, and sharing has become so risky that some organisations have simply come to avoid it. By partnering with Blue Yonder, Snowflake is helping joint customers address these challenges by centralising data into a single source of truth, reducing the latency in decision-making, and making sharing secure, fast and easy,” said Tim Long, Global Head of Manufacturing, Snowflake. “Together, we’re enabling data, system and business process interoperability by connecting Blue Yonder’s entire end-to-end supply chain portfolio to a Blue Yonder’s Platform Data Cloud, Powered by Snowflake. Now, Blue Yonder’s solutions can deliver scale and performance that allow customers to significantly accelerate time to value, unlock team productivity, and drive greater resilience.”

Next Generation Planning

The first set of microservice-based solutions that bring together all of these interoperable features is Blue Yonder’s cognitive planning solutions. This holistic offering natively runs on the Luminate Cognitive Platform to deliver all the cognitive capabilities needed to support supply chain leaders in achieving higher forecast accuracy, accelerating decision making, and building a more resilient supply chain with fewer resources. Cognitive planning solutions are cloud-native and combine the latest data management technology with Blue Yonder’s proven supply chain planning IP.

Blue Yonder’s cognitive planning solutions also leverage the power of Blue Yonder Orchestrator, the company’s generative AI capability that allows businesses to fuel more intelligent decision-making and faster supply chain orchestration. Learn more about this capability here.

“Cognitive planning takes business planning accuracy and speed to the next level by empowering companies to realise their performance objectives. It does this by allowing them to be aware of critical events and prescribing solutions to manage risks and opportunities in both demand and supply, improving planner productivity and supply chain resilience,” said Angove.

Notably, these advanced solutions empower users to apply hundreds of demand-driving variables and patented ML models to provide unique demand projections, while factoring in business impact and risk. This allows planners to map out various scenarios, set boundaries and objectives, then fire-and-forget. The advanced algorithms autonomously reduce the problem scope to a logical set of scenarios that are realistic and most applicable. Embedded predictive AI evaluates this feasible set of scenarios and recommends the top scenarios that optimise pre-set objectives. This AI/ML-powered scenario planning reduces the average time taken from hours or even days down to minutes and allows planners to focus on more strategic decision-making and actions rather than just collating data.

Synchronised Execution

Blue Yonder is revolutionising supply chain execution by enabling seamless, autonomous collaboration across the execution network to drive unprecedented efficiency, resiliency, agility, and better customer experiences. Synchronised Execution strengthens supply chain resiliency with end-to-end execution interoperability and helps businesses manage disruptions in an optimal and automated fashion by synchronising the data and business process workflows across the order, warehouse, transportation, and resource domains. Customers will achieve operational resiliency through real-time situational awareness, real-time decision making, and the ability to predict and prevent disruptions. As an example, business process interoperability allows a business to seamlessly reallocate orders in the case of an inbound supply shortage, or create iterative optimisation loads to handle warehouse disruptions, or determine the optimal way to fulfill an order, even if it is sourced from multiple nodes.

“Retailers, manufacturers, suppliers and logistics service providers will achieve superior performance with intelligent insight and informed decisions to ensure they are ahead of every disruption with complete visibility at every point of execution. With advanced customer insights about buying behaviour and preferences, businesses can make informed decisions about inventory allocation, optimised fulfillment, transportation planning and warehouse operations,” shared Angove.

Solutions launched in this space include:
● Analyst Workbench delivers a new, user-friendly experience to explore data, visualise metrics and generate insights. These new, innovative capabilities deliver end-to-end visibility across the network and the ability to mix, match, and analyse data from any digital touch point driving more informed decisions and actions.
● Unified Commerce Simulator empowers businesses to create, analyse, and refine fulfillment sourcing strategies driving more predictable fulfillment results with less risk to the business. This digital twin environment means businesses can manipulate optimisation levers for various scenarios and run simulations against production data to enable comparisons between actual output versus output using the changed levers.

UK Logistics Fund Raises £427m

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Clarion Partners Europe, the real estate investment fund manager specialising in logistics and industrial assets, announces that it has held the final closing of its core-plus, closed-end UK logistics fund (“Fund”). Exceeding its capital-raising target, equity commitments totaling £427 million have been secured from a mix of European, North American, and Asian institutions, including investors in Clarion Partner Europe’s previous pan-European logistics strategies. The Fund, with gearing, will provide c. £650 million of investable capital and is now closed to new investors.

The Fund is Clarion Partners Europe’s first to solely focus on the UK, a market it recently re-entered following a seven-year break. It will target a portfolio of high-quality, ESG-compliant logistics assets underpinned by strong rental growth fundamentals in established UK logistics hubs. With the flexibility to invest across the asset class, from last mile logistics to big box single tenant warehouses, the Fund will target both best-in-class assets whilst also seeking to create value through investing in underperforming assets and selective development opportunities.

The Fund will leverage Clarion Partners Europe’s management’s 24-year investment and asset management history, which includes over £3 billion of logistics asset transactions across the UK and Europe, as well as the broader expertise of Clarion Partners, which has a 40-year track record in real estate investment management and a $45 billion, 1000+ property global industrial portfolio.

Alistair Calvert, CEO of Clarion Partners Europe, commented: “This is an opportune time to be scaling up in the UK, a market with strong long-term property fundamentals and where we have deep experience, and which is witnessing a pricing adjustment the likes of which hasn’t been seen in at least the last 30 years. We focus on delivering strong investor returns by identifying the industrial sector’s evolving trends and tailoring our strategy accordingly. Having amassed a portfolio of highly sustainable product that meets the demand of today’s occupier on the Continent, we are convinced we have the local, on-the-ground origination and asset management expertise to replicate this in the UK.”

Rory Buck, Head of Investment at Clarion Partners Europe, added: “Significant rental growth in recent years means many existing properties have baked in reversion and lease rent review mechanics, which provides investors the ability to capture this regardless of lease length. Additionally, our specialisation in the industrial sector allows us to enhance certainty of execution to potential sellers which contributed to completing two transactions in the UK last year.”

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