I'm an accountant and serial entrepreneur. I want to quit "talking" about the circular economy and start developing ways to physically "advance" it. I'm seeking like-minded contacts to collaborate with on this project.
In the future, you will know the source of every component in the products you use or manufacture, how it was produced, the energy consumed in its production, perhaps even who will own it next and how much they will pay you for it. This is the natural, inevitable outcome of combining circular economy principles … More The Effects Of Linking The Supply And Reverse Chains
Rapid globalization, fierce competition, social change, technological breakthroughs, scarcity of raw materials; businesses need to reinvent themselves continuously to cope with this string of challenges. Technical, commercial and financial innovations tend to be the focus of attention; innovative partnerships less so. And yet the latter are no less indispensable than the former. The future of … More The Future Of Supply Chains Will Be Defined By Collaboration
The #1 Driver of Logistics Innovation is… Visibility Surprised? You shouldn’t be. The days of having trucks go out and losing sight of where they are, what stock they have, what their status is (on-shift etc.) or if they have arrived to their destination are long gone. On the customer side, consumers will no longer … More The #1 Driver of Logistics Innovation is…
Companies and governments have been discussing the challenges that lie ahead as we enter a period of rapid innovation and change unlike any the world has ever seen. In a previous post we have made a number of observations about the increasing importance of data and connectivity in realizing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and singled … More Will Open Data Save Supply Chains?
You can’t watch the footage of the latest Atlas robot by Google’s Boston Dynamics without thinking about films like Terminator, Blade Runner, and Robocop. The reality of robotics in those films really isn’t that far away. And for workers the plot is grim: technology and innovation are destroying jobs at an unprecedented rate. A previous … More How Advanced Will Robots Be In Supply Chains By 2020?
Do you realize that we produce about 500 million pallets a year in the US alone to replace the worn pallets that we discard each year? The number of pallets out there is truly staggering. Nearly 2 billion wooden pallets are currently in circulation in the US with a majority of them replaced each year. This … More Wooden Pallets Cost Us More Than You Know!
The circular economy is a generic term for an industrial economy that is, by design or intention, restorative and in which material flows are of two types, biological nutrients, designed to re-enter the biosphere safely, and technical nutrients, which are designed to circulate at high quality without entering the biosphere. The term encompasses more than … More Is the Circular Economy a Myth?
Setting the stage We talk a lot about sustainability. Climate change, greenhouse (GHG) emissions, carbon footprints and a host of other related topics that bounce around the Internet or become the topic of speakers at countless seminars or conventions around the world and lead us to believe that we’re actually doing something to combat these … More Supply Chain’s Required Paradigm Shifts
A half-century ago, there was deep and widespread concern that automation and new technology were leading to chronically high levels of unemployment. In retrospect, we know the fear at that time was unfounded. But it is nonetheless fruitful to review the controversy. To set the stage, the U.S. economy suffered 10 months of recession from … More Supply Chain Automation And Job Loss: The Fears Of 1964
As I’ve noted from time to time, blasts of concerns over how automation would reduce the number of jobs have been erupting for more than 200 years. As one example, in “Supply Chain Automation and Job Loss: The Fears of 1964“, I wrote about what were called the “automation jobless” in a 1961 news story and … More Supply Chain Automation and Job Loss: The Fears of 1927
Circular Supply Chains Inc. 