[00:00:06] A good morning Scott Luton here with you Liveline on Supply chain now welcome to the show. In today’s show, we are continuing our Supply chain Bus series, a brief weekly look at some of the top news and trends across the global End to end Supply chain community.

[00:00:21] All in 50 minutes or less. Today’s episode, The Supply chain Buzz Supply chain now is brought to you by the Effective syndicate, a leading coaching and consulting firm that helps companies win by optimizing process and developing winning cultures.

[00:00:36] To learn more. Check them out at the effective syndicate dot com. It’s Monday, January 20th, 2020. Now let’s get to the buzz in our first store this morning. Coming to us from Armacost Grove over at Supply chain div-, we’re talking sustainability in retail. H&M, as many of you may know, is a Swedish multinational clothing retail company known for its fast fashion clothing for men, women, teenagers and children. The company operates just under 5000 stores in over 60 countries worldwide. The retailer pledged to reach 100 percent recycled or sustainable materials across its supply chains by 2030. And it pledged to reach 100 percent sustainable cotton sourcing by 2020. But just how does an organization this big meet those goals? Well, one of the resources H&M is leaning heavily on is artificial intelligence A.I.. As most of us will hear repeated thousands of times in 2020. The company has placed a huge importance on the role of accurate planning as a means of reaching its sustainability goals. If the forecast can’t be largely accurate, then the supply chain consumption of resources will be more efficient and targeted. H&M created it’s a department in twenty eighteen and it now employs 270 people, all with the common aim of making the company as data driven as possible across all of its markets. It’s clothing lines, et cetera, and that certainly includes enhanced planning and forecasting. Like most fashion retailers involved, e-commerce, H&M is also very conscious of brand risk when it comes to processing returns.

[00:02:23] In 2017, the company was accused of burning twelve tons of returned clothing rather than making it available for purchase. H&M claimed that the apparel was damaged or unsafe for consumers, which triggered their decision to destroy it. Perhaps unknown to many consumers, burning or destroying returns happens consistently across industry. H&M hopes that the powerful and practical deployment of Asia, as well as other elements of their management approach, will help the organization not just avoid such incidents, but also meet its overall sustainability goals in the years ahead. In our second story here on the Supply chain Buzz, we’re going to stick with a topic of sustainability, but shift industries over to big food. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal’s Logistics report, Nazli is working overtime to reduce its use of plastics, much like H&M, Knisley has also set some aggressive sustainability goals, including cutting its use of plastics made from fossil fuels by 33 percent in five years and investing over 2 billion dollars to fund more and more recycled materials. Consumers are more or more looking to avoid plastic anything. Personally speaking, our household is especially looking for ways to avoid single use, plastic and based on the whims the consumer. Naturally, companies are responding. Some of the biggest players in consumer goods have launched new initiatives such as Unilever last year committed to cutting 50 percent of all of the fossil fuel produced plastics that it uses by 2025.

[00:04:05] Procter and Gamble also pledged to cut 50 percent of the same. But by 2030, companies such as Mars Inc. And PepsiCo have also made similar commitments. But big food? The challenge is a bit greater because you’ve got the source recycled materials that are 100 percent safe to be in direct contact with food and drink. So there’s no risk to human consumption of the products. Another challenge when it comes to plastics usage is this technically, most plastics are recyclable. But recent years demands for recycled plastic have been so low, so much so that even highly recyclable drink bottles have hit landfills and similar things. Yep, you guessed it. Supply and demand is alive and well in the recycling markets too. But back to Nestlé. Last week, the company committed to spending well over one billion dollars on finding recycled plastic packaging that is safe for food contact. Right now, just 2 percent of Nestlé’s plastic packaging by weight is currently made from recycled material. And the company also earmarked over 250 million dollars to invest in startups researching new materials, refill systems and recycling technologies. OK, for our third story here on the Supply chain Buzz today, we’re going to shift over to talk technology and manufacturing, according to a story by Anthony born at Industry Week.

[00:05:33] There’s three big ways they see tech will be changing manufacturing in 2020. Now, there’s certainly no shortage of technologies that have been impacting the manufacturing industry for years as it gets digitized. Like any other industry, the Internet of Things outie has been connecting the factory of the future, enhancing a wide variety of production needs such as preventive maintenance. 5G is really beginning to take root and spread. 3D printing has been here for years. Cloud computing, blockchain, etc cetera, et cetera. So here’s Mr. Bourne, an industry week’s take on three big things look for when it comes to tech and manufacturing in 2020. Prediction 1 by the end of twenty twenty five G. We’ll have more machine than human customers. So five G’s impact on manufacturing and and industrial automation will be transformational. Machines will be talking with each other more and more, but with much more data and machine learning involved, making for quite a powerful combination allowing plants to reach all time new levels of efficiency and cost savings. Prediction 2 In 2020, the B to B to C model will start to compete in earnest with the B to C model. More and more manufacturers will be able to serve the incomes. I’m sorry. The in consumer of a product due to tech enabled sensors and other technologies and items that helped build new direct relationships predict three by 2020 to more than half of manufacturers will have invested in a technology leading to 10 percent and improved productivity.

[00:07:16] So modern industrial automation in plants is driven solid efficiencies and successes and innovations, mainly by streamlining processes. But A.I. will enable operations to create net new processes such as eliminating quality problems before they even arise, creating new customized products for specific customers and powering next generation demand planning and forecasting. The article cites a November 2019 study from IFRS that found 40 percent of manufacturers said they were planning to implement Eya for inventory planning and Logistics, followed by production scheduling and CRM each at 36 percent. You know, I think that the simplification and the democratization of Asia, those numbers are very conservative. Asia is not just for the industry leaders these days, but really it’s for all. As we wrap up with story number four here on The Buzz today, we want to cover a couple of recent partnerships and acquisition announcements. According to a recent story, a Supply chain Management Review, Resilience 360 and Risk Pulse are joining forces to create an even more robust supply chain risk management solution. Now, I must admit, I recently had lunch with one of the one of the leadership team members of the combined organization, and he painted a very compelling picture of the product by asking the questions.

[00:08:46] What if you could visibly map out your entire global supply chain at the touch of a button? And furthermore, what if you could overlay customized Real-Time Operational Logistics and even geopolitical risks with the touch of a second button? I was fascinated by the concept and really looked forward to a future demo. Resilience 360 was incubated in d.h ls Global Innovation Center, Columbia Capital Greene Spring Associates and DHL recently announced the acquisition of Risk Pulse to scale the business in combination with Resilience 360. Stay tuned as we’ll be featuring a leader or two from these innovative companies on Supply chain now in the months ahead. The other develop. The other development that we wanted to briefly cover is global is acquisition of some races. As our audience may recall, we featured Global Trends executive chairman Bob Farrell on Supply chain. Now a couple of times in the last twelve months, through those interviews, we got a sense of the type of culture and leadership that has driven the company’s success. Global trends as a private equity backed industry consolidator that has doubled in size since 2017. It’s one of the 10 largest freight brokerage companies in America, with revenue close to 2 billion dollars as report about transport topics. Psoriasis is a privately held company based in Eagan, Minnesota, with about 150 million in revenue and one hundred nineteen employees. The company describes itself as a technology enabled 3L that provides Logistics services and solutions through its proprietary transportation management system.

[00:10:26] Cirrhosis serves over 700 customers in North America. Global Tran CEO Rene Krug Krug was quoted in a statement as saying, quote, Psoriasis will help expand global trends is growing managed transportation capabilities. The talented racist team, combined with a talented team of agents and employees at global trends, will drive increased differentiation and accelerate the growth of our solutions in the marketplace, end quote. Stay tuned as we’ll be interviewing Adam Rod, Adam Robinson with the races in the coming weeks. Adam serves as marketing manager at some races in Salt, is also host of a popular podcast that covers a variety of industry news and trends. Very exciting times ahead for Adam and his colleagues, for sure. Well, there you have it. That’s a wrap for today’s episode, several of the leading Supply chain news stories and trends right here on the Supply chain Buzz on supply chain. Now you’ll find links to each of the stories that we featured today on the show, notes for your convenience. Big thanks to today’s sponsor of the Supply chain Buzz. The Effective syndicate be sure to check them out over at the Effective syndicate dot com. And to our listeners, beware aware from Bill down in Savannah, Georgia to Anastasia in Odessa, Ukraine, to Kayla in Sydney, Australia, and all points in between.

[00:11:49] We appreciate you joining us on behalf of the entire Supply chain Now team. This is Scott Luton.

[00:11:55] We wish you all a very successful kid. Thanks for.