GOODQUESTION Readers Weigh In
What’s your biggest supply chain takeaway from peak season?
PEAK SEASON IS A 12-MONTH JOB. You need to commit time and resources all year long
Extrapolate Demand at Your Own Peril
to analyzing past performance for opportunities to improve, forecasting future demand, and lining up both primary capacity and secondary carriers that can step in immediately in a crunch. –Shawn McCloud Senior Vice President, Operations Coyote Logistics EARLY DETECTION IS IMPORTANT. You can’t always forecast when the pendulum will swing the other way, especially with constant disruptions. Being able to monitor demand and sense changes in real time can give you a competitive advantage. –Lachelle Buchanan Vice President, Logility INBOUND OCEAN TEU s , as long as no backlogs exist, are a strong leading indicator for pending retail freight volumes. –Christopher Thornycroft EVP, Procurement, Redwood Logistics UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE between a robust and a resilient supply chain. Robust means being able to absorb any shock without breaking, whereas resiliency recognizes disruption is inevitable, while also knowing how fast you can recover. To understand your resilience, ask, “Are we recovering better and faster than others?” –Vincent Cellard Vice President Commodity Management, Flex
Don’t mistake initial strong demand for sustained, continued demand. Expecting the buying rate to continue at pace when resupplying can lead to significant overstock issues if the customer type who’s purchasing has reached saturation point. Retailers need to tune into a diverse set of demand signals to get a more accurate gauge on inventory replenishment. –Jonah Ellin Chief Product Officer, 1010data Understand point-of-use demand and don’t overreact to buying patterns. Many companies saw demand surges, ramped up capacity, and moved to “just-in-case” inventory policies to buffer against future volatility. Now they are dealing with excess inventory and capacity. –Allen Jacques Industry Thought Leader, Kinaxis
COLLABORATE TO INNOVATE. Recently, consumers returned holiday purchases at record-highs, demanding agile supply chains that move both outbound and inbound. To meet consumer demand and improve reverse logistics, our industry needs to enable shared resources like data, warehousing, transportation, and labor to create efficiencies at scale. –Dan Ahrens Director, Customer Solutions, CHEP HAVING ACCESS TO CAPACITY translates to success, regardless of the intensity of a peak season. We leverage technology to connect to our network of LTL and truckload providers. –Doug Waggoner CEO, Echo Global Logistics
BE PREPARED FOR THE HIGHS AND THE LOWS. Plan for lots of different scenarios and be flexible enough that you can spin up capacity quickly and if the volume doesn’t come, that you’re able to reallocate resources and dollars. –Daniel Sokolovsky CEO and Co-Founder, WARP CONSUMERS ARE MORE INTERESTED IN SUSTAINABLE HOME DELIVERY options and this has become a delivery “persona” that retailers need to heed because it not only increases customer loyalty, but can also result in lower delivery costs. –Chris Jones EVP, Industry and Services, Descartes
6 Inbound Logistics • February 2023
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