Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Forward Thinking

Gartner Announces Winners of the 2016 Supply Chainnovators Awards

Supply Chain Innovation Recognized in Healthcare, High-Tech Manufacturing, and Consumer/Retail Sectors

The research firm Gartner Inc. announced the winners of its 2016 Supply Chainnovator Awards on May 17 at its Supply Chain Executive Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. The awards recognize innovative and high-impact supply chain initiatives in the health care, high-tech manufacturing, and consumer/retail sectors. The five winners and their innovations were as follows:

Health care
  • AstraZeneca was recognized for its Healthy Heart Africa initiative, which is leveraging supply chains across multiple diverse network partners to bring hypertension awareness, screening, and care to 10 million Africans by 2025.
  • Mercy ROi's Unified Analytics Platform (UAP) combines seven technology platforms into one location to improve decision making, thereby positively impacting the cost and quality of care.
High-Tech Manufacturing
  • Cisco uses its Adaptive Test system to leverage production test data from Cisco's internal test processes and test data from global suppliers to optimize product quality and cost over the product's life cycle.
  • Jabil's InControl software identifies areas of concern, risk, and opportunity, then uses real-time predictive modeling to improve decision making, protect against disruption, improve manufacturing and distribution flexibility, and minimize total landed cost.
Consumer/Retail
  • Mead Johnson Nutrition was recognized for its "Fast and Agile" initiative, which connects supply chain execution to consumer demand by replenishing supply in alignment with what is being consumed downstream.

Through the Supply Chainnovator awards program, Gartner recognizes supply chain innovations that are impactful, sustainable, unconventional, collaborative, and measurable. Participants must be willing to share with the broader supply chain community lessons learned and how results were achieved. The winners were selected by a panel of Gartner analysts.

Recent

More Stories

AI image of a dinosaur in teacup

Amazon to release new generation of AI models in 2025

Logistics and e-commerce giant Amazon says it will release a new collection of AI tools in 2025 that could “simplify the lives of shoppers, sellers, advertisers, enterprises, and everyone in between.”

The launch is based on “Amazon Nova,” the company’s new generation of foundation models, the company said in a blog post. Data scientists use foundation models (FMs) to develop machine learning (ML) platforms more quickly than starting from scratch, allowing them to create artificial intelligence applications capable of performing a wide variety of general tasks, since they were trained on a broad spectrum of generalized data, Amazon says.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Logistics economy continues on solid footing
Logistics Managers' Index

Logistics economy continues on solid footing

Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in November, continuing a steady growth pattern that began earlier this year and signaling a return to seasonality after several years of fluctuating conditions, according to the latest Logistics Managers’ Index report (LMI), released today.

The November LMI registered 58.4, down slightly from October’s reading of 58.9, which was the highest level in two years. The LMI is a monthly gauge of business conditions across warehousing and logistics markets; a reading above 50 indicates growth and a reading below 50 indicates contraction.

Keep ReadingShow less
chart of top business concerns from descartes

Descartes: businesses say top concern is tariff hikes

Business leaders at companies of every size say that rising tariffs and trade barriers are the most significant global trade challenge facing logistics and supply chain leaders today, according to a survey from supply chain software provider Descartes.

Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.

Keep ReadingShow less
diagram of blue yonder software platforms

Blue Yonder users see supply chains rocked by hack

Grocers and retailers are struggling to get their systems back online just before the winter holiday peak, following a software hack that hit the supply chain software provider Blue Yonder this week.

The ransomware attack is snarling inventory distribution patterns because of its impact on systems such as the employee scheduling system for coffee stalwart Starbucks, according to a published report. Scottsdale, Arizona-based Blue Yonder provides a wide range of supply chain software, including warehouse management system (WMS), transportation management system (TMS), order management and commerce, network and control tower, returns management, and others.

Keep ReadingShow less
drawing of person using AI

Amazon invests another $4 billion in AI-maker Anthropic

Amazon has deepened its collaboration with the artificial intelligence (AI) developer Anthropic, investing another $4 billion in the San Francisco-based firm and agreeing to establish Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary training partner and to collaborate on developing its specialized machine learning (ML) chip called AWS Trainium.

The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.

Keep ReadingShow less