Ford gets free publicity for promising autonomous cars in 5 years→

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Neal E. Boudette, writing for the New York Times:

At a news conference on Tuesday at the company’s research center in Palo Alto, Calif., Mark Fields, Ford’s chief executive, said the company planned to mass produce driverless cars and have them in commercial operation in a ride-hailing service by 2021.

No steering wheel. No pedal. Fully autonomous by 2021. Can I take the over please? While technically possible, I find it unlikely that an incumbent auto manufacturer will pull this off in the next 5 years.

Can a Start-up save the World’s Largest Retailer

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Can a Start-up save the World’s Largest Retailer

Walmart acquired jet.com, an aggressive eCommerce player founded in 2014 to take on Amazon, for $3.3 bn. Walmart is a distant second to Amazon in online sales in the US - $14 billion compared to $63 billion for Amazon. More troubling, however, has been Walmart's declining year over year eCommerce sales growth. With eCommerce, Walmart has adapted an Omni-channel fulfillment strategy which makes sense on paper - 90% of Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart store so the stores can serve as eCommerce fulfillment centers for the last mile delivery...

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Micro Hubs and Shared Mobility: A Share Economy Concept for Same-Day Delivery

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Micro Hubs and Shared Mobility: A Share Economy Concept for Same-Day Delivery

If you’re like me, you’re probably shopping more online - making smaller orders more often and at the same time expecting fast and free delivery, even if it’s not urgent. The growth of eCommerce has fueled increasingly challenging delivery options for both retailers and major parcel carriers alike. For consumers, tomorrow is just not fast enough and most are not prepared to pay for the true cost of delivery.

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Tesla’s Master Plan Part Deux and the Future of Line Haul deliveries

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Tesla’s Master Plan Part Deux and the Future of Line Haul deliveries

Genius, Blowhard, Bond-Villain extraordinaire Elon Musk, depending on your point of view, published his Master Plan Part Deux for Tesla. In general the manifesto was in line with the assumed direction of the industry - fully autonomous cars, autonomous commercial vehicles, and the ability for your Tesla to drive other people/cargo around for money while you are not using the car. From a line-haul transportation perspective, self driving cars offer enormous potential...

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The Robots are Coming

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The Robots are Coming

A recent McKinsey and Co. report entitled “Where machines could replace humans and where they can’t (yet)” looked across industry sectors to determine which jobs could be replaced by machines based on currently demonstrated technologies. f you view this report through the lens of warehousing, many physical activities performed in a warehouse throughout the workday are predictable, making many warehousing jobs highly susceptible to automation...

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Amazon’s push into Private-Label Foods as a China Play

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Amazon’s push into Private-Label Foods as a China Play

Greg Bensinger, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon.com Inc. has quietly begun its first broad push into perishable private-label foods, enabling the online retailer to test new products with generally higher profit margins. Amazon this week began offering for sale on its website whole-bean and ground coffee under its new Happy Belly label, pitting itself against crosstown rival Starbucks Corp. Amazon also has rolled out bottled Mama Bear baby food in two flavors.

So, why would Amazon do this...

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Chinese eCommerce Company Launches Drone Deliveries→

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Chinese eCommerce Company Launches Drone Deliveries

While the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration recently announced new regulations for commercial drones which is not bringing package deliveries any closer, online Chinese retailer JD.com successfully used drones to deliver packages to rural areas in the northern Jiangsu provice. The drones can make deliveries up to 15 Kilograms each, fly up to 10 kilometers, and manage up to 200 packages per day, as well as load and unload packages autonomously...

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Amazon, Kiva Robots, and the Widening Moat

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Amazon, Kiva Robots, and the Widening Moat

ravel time by warehouse pickers typically accounts for 50-60% of the total order fulfillment costs and considering that Amazon ships upwards of 5 billion items per year , optimizing the order fulfillment process has an enormous impact on Amazon’s bottom line. In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva for $775 million and rolled out robots in their distribution centers in 2014...

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Click and Collect and Short Term Thinking

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Click and Collect and Short Term Thinking

Click and Collect in store has become the latest Holy Grail in Retail enticing Retailers with the promise of driving conversions both online and in the store. There are a myriad of recent research that illustrates the popularity of click and collect with consumers.  Would click and collect just be a niche option if the last mile delivery problem was solved? [...]

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Sprouts Farmers Market Partners with Amazon→

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Evan Hoopfer, writing for the Dallas Business Journal:

“Amazon is expanding its produce delivery services in Dallas...The service is part of Amazon’s “Prime Now,” which delivers goods in hours.”

What do you do when faced with a vastly stronger competitor? You team up. This seems like a no-brainer especially for small to mid-size retailers. The breadth and depth of knowledge required to master e-commerce is staggering and not many retailers have the resources, technology, or logistics infrastructure to compete.

The Evolution of Retail Distribution

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E-commerce is a major driver for global change in the logistics industry. E-Commerce sales are fast outpacing traditional brick and mortar sales and the impact on logistics is significant due to changes in physical distribution networks, including massive e-fulfillment centers, sortation hubs, parcel hubs, and urban fulfillment centers for quicker order fulfillment. The logistics distribution process to get product’s into the hands of consumers has transformed significantly over the last 50 years and there are some similarities that can be made [....]

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