Victoria Kickham, an editor at large for Supply Chain Quarterly, started her career as a newspaper reporter in the Boston area before moving into B2B journalism. She has covered manufacturing, distribution and supply chain issues for a variety of publications in the industrial and electronics sectors, and now writes about everything from forklift batteries to omnichannel business trends for Supply Chain Quarterly's sister publication, DC Velocity.
Supply lines are moving slower across the U.S./Canada border, especially in the Detroit area, as protests continue throughout Canada in the wake of Covid-19 vaccine mandates affecting truck drivers, which took effect in January.
Data from supply chain visibility platform FourKites showed changes in on-time delivery, shipment volume, and wait times as the vaccine mandates went into effect the weeks of January 15 (for U.S. to Canada travel) and January 22 (for Canada to U.S. travel), and the company is continuing to track volatile conditions, especially at the Detroit/Windsor, Ontario, border, which is the busiest land crossing between the two countries and a vital corridor for auto industry trade.
Glenn Koepke, FourKites’ senior vice president for customer success, said the situation marks one more in a long line of supply chain disruptions companies have had to deal with in the past two years. He said the slowdowns and lower shipment volumes will be “pretty significant” over the next week or two in the Detroit area, with residual effects in the broader regions on both sides of the border.
“I think folks didn’t anticipate as much of a reaction to what happened [after the vaccine mandates and protests], and it immediately was reflected in poor on-time data [and] decreased performance,” Koepke said. “We see a shift in volume as well.”
FourKites tracked a 9% decrease in on-time delivery performance, a 7% decrease in total shipment volume, and a 17% increase in average wait times for all U.S./Canada cross border shipments the week of January 15, compared to the previous week.
On-time delivery performance fell 4% and average border wait times increased 8% the week of January 22, with no decrease in shipment volume. On-time delivery performance for U.S. to Canada shipments have since improved, but the data show declining rates for deliveries from Canada to the United States, likely due to continuing effects from protests and blockades, Koepke said. Wait times from the U.S. to Canada were trending downward by roughly 30% as of this past Monday, but wait times from Canada to the U.S. were up by 20% or more compared to the previous week.
As of Thursday morning, Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge, which Koepke says typically handles around 8,000 trucks a day crossing the border, remained temporarily closed.
Automotive production lines face the most immediate threat, but Koepke said he expects impacts on the customer fulfillment side over the next few weeks as companies deal with delays and the need to re-route deliveries.
“We’ll see a slowdown in inbound raw materials shipments, a slowdown in production, and customer deliveries,” he said.
As of Wednesday, major automakers in the region had closed some operations and reduced shifts as a result of shortages.
The cross-border vaccine mandates have spurred protests against the Canadian government’s broader Covid-19 restrictions. Led by the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers that made its way across the country to the capital city of Ottawa last week, the protests have attracted people from all over Canada and are impeding business and trade in Ottawa, Windsor, and elsewhere.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance, which has said it opposes the protests, released a statement this week urging government and business leaders to work together to end the blockades.
“The patience of drivers and the vast majority of the trucking industry regarding these blockades has long-since expired. The trucking industry and its drivers are paying a heavy price for the unlawful actions of those who choose to politicize and target our borders and highways and choke off trade between Canada and the United States. Their actions simply hurt Canadians and they have shown a blatant disregard for all the lives they are impacting,” CTA President Stephen Laskowski said in the statement.
U.S. trade groups have also weighed in on the issue. Earlier this week, the Missouri-based Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) sent letters to both the Biden Administration and to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Troudeau asking that truck drivers be excluded from the cross-border vaccine mandates, as they were under previous Covid-19 restrictions. OOIDA has more than 150,000 members in North America, including 1,000 Canadian drivers. The group says the nature of the drivers’ work and their status as essential workers should exclude them from the mandates.
“Throughout the Covid-19 emergency, professional truckers have been risking their lives to deliver critical goods to communities throughout the U.S. and Canada. Prior to January 2022, truckers were operating safely back and forth across the U.S-Canadian border to ensure North Americans had the food and supplies they needed without having to show proof of vaccination or disclosing any other aspects of their personal medical history,” OOIDA wrote in the letter to Prime Minister Trudeau. “Since commercial drivers spend the majority of their time alone in their vehicle and outside, there is no evidence that truckers present a higher risk of spreading the virus. Because the current cross-border policy disregards the economic contributions of the trucking industry and overlooks the basic operating procedures of the profession, we urge you to immediately exempt professional truck drivers from the vaccination mandate.”
OOIDA said the mandates impede cross-border trade, noting that many drivers have elected not to operate cross-border routes under the new rules and that others have experienced excessive wait times at the border due to the new protocols.
“This has intensified existing challenges facing North American freight networks and the supply chain and has resulted in higher prices for consumers,” they wrote in letters to both administrations.
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.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
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.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."
Specifically, the new global average robot density has reached a record 162 units per 10,000 employees in 2023, which is more than double the mark of 74 units measured seven years ago.
Broken into geographical regions, the European Union has a robot density of 219 units per 10,000 employees, an increase of 5.2%, with Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia in the global top ten. Next, North America’s robot density is 197 units per 10,000 employees – up 4.2%. And Asia has a robot density of 182 units per 10,000 persons employed in manufacturing - an increase of 7.6%. The economies of Korea, Singapore, mainland China and Japan are among the top ten most automated countries.
Broken into individual countries, the U.S. ranked in 10th place in 2023, with a robot density of 295 units. Higher up on the list, the top five are:
The Republic of Korea, with 1,012 robot units, showing a 5% increase on average each year since 2018 thanks to its strong electronics and automotive industries.
Singapore had 770 robot units, in part because it is a small country with a very low number of employees in the manufacturing industry, so it can reach a high robot density with a relatively small operational stock.
China took third place in 2023, surpassing Germany and Japan with a mark of 470 robot units as the nation has managed to double its robot density within four years.
Germany ranks fourth with 429 robot units for a 5% CAGR since 2018.
Japan is in fifth place with 419 robot units, showing growth of 7% on average each year from 2018 to 2023.
Progress in generative AI (GenAI) is poised to impact business procurement processes through advancements in three areas—agentic reasoning, multimodality, and AI agents—according to Gartner Inc.
Those functions will redefine how procurement operates and significantly impact the agendas of chief procurement officers (CPOs). And 72% of procurement leaders are already prioritizing the integration of GenAI into their strategies, thus highlighting the recognition of its potential to drive significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, Gartner found in a survey conducted in July, 2024, with 258 global respondents.
Gartner defined the new functions as follows:
Agentic reasoning in GenAI allows for advanced decision-making processes that mimic human-like cognition. This capability will enable procurement functions to leverage GenAI to analyze complex scenarios and make informed decisions with greater accuracy and speed.
Multimodality refers to the ability of GenAI to process and integrate multiple forms of data, such as text, images, and audio. This will make GenAI more intuitively consumable to users and enhance procurement's ability to gather and analyze diverse information sources, leading to more comprehensive insights and better-informed strategies.
AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks and make decisions on behalf of human operators. In procurement, these agents will automate procurement tasks and activities, freeing up human resources to focus on strategic initiatives, complex problem-solving and edge cases.
As CPOs look to maximize the value of GenAI in procurement, the study recommended three starting points: double down on data governance, develop and incorporate privacy standards into contracts, and increase procurement thresholds.
“These advancements will usher procurement into an era where the distance between ideas, insights, and actions will shorten rapidly,” Ryan Polk, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Procurement leaders who build their foundation now through a focus on data quality, privacy and risk management have the potential to reap new levels of productivity and strategic value from the technology."
Businesses are cautiously optimistic as peak holiday shipping season draws near, with many anticipating year-over-year sales increases as they continue to battle challenging supply chain conditions.
That’s according to the DHL 2024 Peak Season Shipping Survey, released today by express shipping service provider DHL Express U.S. The company surveyed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to gauge their holiday business outlook compared to last year and found that a mix of optimism and “strategic caution” prevail ahead of this year’s peak.
Nearly half (48%) of the SMEs surveyed said they expect higher holiday sales compared to 2023, while 44% said they expect sales to remain on par with last year, and just 8% said they foresee a decline. Respondents said the main challenges to hitting those goals are supply chain problems (35%), inflation and fluctuating consumer demand (34%), staffing (16%), and inventory challenges (14%).
But respondents said they have strategies in place to tackle those issues. Many said they began preparing for holiday season earlier this year—with 45% saying they started planning in Q2 or earlier, up from 39% last year. Other strategies include expanding into international markets (35%) and leveraging holiday discounts (32%).
Sixty percent of respondents said they will prioritize personalized customer service as a way to enhance customer interactions and loyalty this year. Still others said they will invest in enhanced web and mobile experiences (23%) and eco-friendly practices (13%) to draw customers this holiday season.